Lost in the noise of the complex Vodacom/Maziv deal is a simple question — Do we want fast or slow township fibre rollouts in South Africa?
The Competition Commission has held up a deal between Vodacom and Remgro’s CIVH that has come at a massive opportunity cost for South Africa.
Vodacom has offered a combination of assets and cash of at least R13.2 billion for a 30% shareholding. To protect Vodacom’s interest as a minority shareholder, Remgro and CIVH agreed to give the mobile operator co-control of Maziv., including the ability to block appointing or dismissing Maziv’s CEO and CFO, issuing new shares, financing debt, and the adoption or amendment of a dividend policy.It said they are necessary for Vodacom to feel that CIVH — or another future majority shareholder — can’t trample its rights and jeopardise its over R10-billion investment.
Fibre network operators like Vumatel, Openserve, and Frogfoot are open access, allowing third-party Internet service providers like Afrihost and Axxess to resell services over their infrastructure. With the appropriate conditions in place, mobile operators MTN and Rain have given their support for the transaction.
Herotel also explained that none of the existing Herotel shareholders had the capacity to insert further growth capital. “Vumatel made an offer to acquire a further 49% from Herotel shareholders, but this transaction has been sitting with the Competition Commission since early 2022,” it said. If the industry sees that deals like this are possible, suddenly MTN and Telkom could consider similar investments, or perhaps
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