News
Telco launches legal challenge, claiming MTN will gain unfair advantage from new acquisition’s spectrum.
Etisalat has objected to rival MTN’s recently-concluded acquisition of Visafone in Nigeria, it emerged at the weekend.
The telco has brought a legal challenge against the deal, primarily in a bid to stop MTN from using Visafone’s 800-MHz spectrum, Nigerian newspaper This Day reported on Sunday.
Etisalat believes that use of the spectrum would give MTN undue dominance over the other GSM operators in the market, the paper said.
The telco wants regulatory body the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) to reverse its approval of the deal, it added.
The news that MTN had finally completed the acquisition of Visafone after lengthy negotiations came to light in January, again according to various local press reports.
No source was able to place a value on the transaction.
Visafone is the largest of Nigeria’s CDMA operators, but its subscriber base of 2.03 million as of the end of September, according to the NCC, gives it a tiny presence in the market, therefore there is little question of Etisalat’s objections being anything other than spectrum-related.
Market leader MTN had 62.49 million customers at the same date, while Etisalat – the smallest of Nigeria’s big four GSM operators – had 23.49 million.
