Africa’s largest telecom provider, MTN Group has acquired Visafone, the leading CDMA operator in Nigeria after months of negotiations.
MTN received the final approval of the federal government, paving the way for the purchase of Visafone’s CDMA network. Regulatory approvals are required for the transfer of shareholdings, frequency spectrum and other licences granted by government.
The acquisition is expected to provide MTN the robust voice and data platform of Visafone and cater for the booming Internet population in Nigeria.
“It’s certainly a multimillion naira deal because Visafone was the largest CDMA operator in the country.
“The acquisition is expected to ensure high quality data services and improve mobile broadband experience for subscribers of Visafone and MTN.
“The merger is also expected to provide the much-needed relief to the booming internet economy by making available quality mobile broadband services adopting the state of the art 4G LTE technologies during the year.” An industry source confirmed to Thisday.
Nigeria has about 150 million mobile subscribers and around 97 million internet users, which ranks the country among the fastest growing countries in terms of mobile subscribers and data penetration.
