Based on news report by Thisday, Nigeria’s leading CDMA operator, Visafone, has been acquired by MTN, Africa’s largest telecom service provider. This deal is reported to have gone through after months of negotiations.
The acquisition is aimed at harnessing Visafone’s rich voice and data platform to provider for the ever increasing internet users in Nigeria.
News source from the telecomms industry states that the deal “was certainly a multimillion naira deal because Visafone was the largest CDMA operator in the country. However, there was no infomartion on how much the deal cost MTN.
According to news source
“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.”
4G LTE service are gradually becoming a stable service in Nigeria. In the past various service providers had boasted of supporting such, however, it left much to be desired. With the rise of broadband service providers such as SMILE, Spectranet, Swift, Globacomm and new entry MTN, Nigerian will witness a higher broadband penetration.
4G LTE service are available in select cities, based on area covered by service provider. We are bound to see an increase of coverage area by 4G service providers, also a decrease in the cost 4G LTE services as competition is begun to stiffen.
According to the MTN merger news source, the aggressive launch of 4G LTE service by the newly co-joined MTN and Visafone is in tadem with the national broadband plan of the federal government. The new merger is expected to increase broadband penetration from under 10 percent to the targeted 30 per cent by 2018.
2018 is a long way off, for now, until then we will be seeing more 4G LTE (Long Term Evolution) service providers rolling out as well as increased coverage and consolidation of service.
Do you use 4G LTE service? whats your experience? Do share and recommend a service provider.
Source: Thisday
It isnt about acquiring visafone.
They should concentrate more on solidifying their network here cos most times MTN network is pathetic and their data of 1.5GB hardly last 2 weeks
survival of the fittest. sad news for Visafone
They haven’t taken proper care of the ones they have, good for them anyway
MTN is the best network
Buy MTN SIM card and enjoy
Wow that’s awesome
The company was failing already, guess this was a bailout
I think Mtn is one of the best