The deal between Telkom and MTN would have been good for competition in South Africa’s mobile market.
That’s the view of MTN South Africa, which on Tuesday reacted to the news that Telkom had decided to walk away from the proposed transaction after the Competition Commission said it would not sanction it.
Under the proposed deal, Telkom would have outsourced management of its radio access network (RAN) – the part of its network that connects consumers to its base stations. They were also set to sign a bilateral roaming agreement, allowing users of both operators to roam seamlessly between networks.
“The transaction between MTN and Telkom would have constituted the first RAN infrastructure sharing arrangement in South Africa between two mobile network operators and was aimed at meeting the demand in the unprecedented global shift from traditional voice to data,” MTN said in a statement.
“MTN believes that the transaction would have encouraged competition in the market and between the parties, fostered an efficient utilisation of the networks of both parties and would have been to the benefit of the sector and the country by catering to the exponential data growth,” it said.
“It is regrettable that the matter is not moving forward to the Competition Tribunal as the final decision-making authority, as MTN firmly believes, the transaction would have enabled competition in the market and between the parties and that MTN would have been able to clearly demonstrate this before the Competition Tribunal. The transaction would have resulted in an efficient utilisation of the networks of both parties and would have been to the benefit of the sector and the country as a whole in terms of the rapidly growing demand for data.”
MTN said it will explore other ways of “efficient network consolidation and sharing as is happening in other parts of the world”.
“MTN also has multiple firm network expansion, efficiency, wholesale and sharing strategies in place which are underpinned by an aggressive network roll-out of all technology streams including fibre and LTE.
“The proposed Telkom deal was just one element of the larger MTN strategy, which entailed the RAN and fibre strategies. We are pursuing other RAN efficiency gains and exploring other network sharing transactions.” — © 2015 NewsCentral Media
