South Africa's MTN Group, owners of MTN Nigeria and Visafone Communications Limited have finalised a deal that will the Nigerian indigenous mobile phone company yield its operations to MTN. It was learnt that deal was penned late 2015 to pave way for the MTN's purchase of Visafone's CDMA network, after a regulatory approval by the telecoms regulator, Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC).
The acquisition of Visafone, is expected to provide MTN the robust voice and data platform of Visafone and cater for the booming internet population in Nigeria. The attractive features of Visafone that may have been the driving force for MTN’s interest in the company, it was further learnt,include the plans by Visafone to expand its investment into broadband services through the rollout of 4G LTE services. This advanced technology offers greater triple play of voice, data and video. Besides, with the acquisition, Visafone's 800MHz spectrum frequency will now be integrated into MTN's network to boost its voice and data offerings. For the Visafone customers that number over two million the deal offers enhanced nationwide reach of MTN. Highly placed industry sources confirmed that the transaction had been concluded, but they did not disclose how much MTN is paying to acquire Visafone. It is believed by insutry operators that the acquisition is expected to ensure would bring about quality data services and improve mobile broadband experience for subscribers of Visafone and MTN. It will make available quality mobile broadband services adopting the state of the art 4G LTE technologies during the year. With about 150 million mobile subscribers and about 97 million internet users, Nigeria ranks among the fastest growing countries in terms of mobile subscribers and data penetration.