MTN selling more towers?
Speculation points to a continued sell-off by MTN of its towers, with Nigeria being the latest territory to see the sale of the group’s infrastructure.
Nigeria boasts more than a quarter of the MTN group’s overall subscriber base.
In South Africa, MTN has batted away rumours that it may have reached a deal with Telkom Mobile which involves tower and network sharing, and a more extensive roaming agreement.
Graham de Vries, MTN’s acting chief corporate services officer, told MyBroadband that the company does not comment on market rumour and speculation.
“However, as a normal business practice, MTN engages with companies such as Telkom on matters such as roaming agreements,” said de Vries.
Last year in July, however, TMT Finance reported that American Tower (ATC) was on the verge of acquiring MTN’s towers portfolio in South Africa, which reports put at around 8,000 in number.
MTN Nigeria
Reuters recently reported that MTN is planning to sell its portfolio of 9,000 towers in Nigeria.
Reuters noted that building and maintaining mobile towers in Africa is expensive due to security costs and electricity shortages requiring the infrastructure to be powered by generators, with no road access in rural areas.
MTN has in the past reported attacks on some of its tower installations in Northern Nigeria.
A sale would be in keeping with the operator’s recent trend. In December, it announced that it had agreed to sell its tower portfolios in Rwanda and Zambia to IHS Holdings.
According to MTN the sale included 1,228 mobile network towers – 524 in Rwanda and 704 in Zambia – and is in line with the group’s “asset optimization strategy”, which follows two previous deals with IHS in Cameroon and Côté d’Ivoire, for a total of 1,758 towers.
Reuters reported that Bharti, Nigeria’s third largest operator with a 19% share of mobile subscribers, has the inside lane to a sale of its infrastructure.
Nigeria’s other operator Etisalat Nigeria, meanwhile, has appointed South Africa’s Standard Bank as adviser for a potential sale of its towers.
“Prospective buyers are in the midst of conducting diligence, the sources said, and whichever operator sells first will have considerable first-mover advantage,” Reuters said.
Etisalat Nigeria is estimated to have around 2,500 towers in Nigeria; Bharti, 6,000; and MTN, 9,000.
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