Zambia seeking bids for new mobile provider to take on MTN

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Published Sep 19, 2017

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JOHANNESBURG - Zambia is

seeking bidders for a fourth mobile-network license to take on operators including

market leader MTN Group in the southern African country, Transport and

Communications Minister Brian Mushimba said.

The ministry last week gave

the go-ahead to the telecommunications regulator to start the process, he said

in a recorded response to questions on Monday. The new carrier could be in

place over the next six to 12 months and the country may even have capacity for

a fifth operator, he said. The local unit of India’s Bharti Airtel and

state-owned Zamtel make up the current trio.

Communication costs in Zambia have been “rather on the high side,”

Mushimba said from Lusaka,

the capital. “The market analysis that we have done supports the fact that we

can have a fourth licensee and possibly a fifth and still the market will be

profitable. 

The upcoming auction

represents a rare opportunity for international wireless carriers to expand in

sub-Saharan Africa without making an

acquisition. Slowing economic growth and falling tax revenue have limited the

need for new providers, while Ethiopia

is the only significant market that hasn’t already opened up spectrum to

private bidders. Some companies, including Airtel and Millicom International

Cellular SA, have made a partial retreat by selling off country units.

World’s Biggest Mobile

Carriers Defeated as Africa Promise Fades.

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Zambia, Africa’s

second-biggest copper producer with a population of more than 16 million, had

12.4 million active mobile subscribers at the end of June, 10 percent more than

a year before, according to data from the finance ministry. The country had 5.9

million internet users by the end of June, a 3 percent rise from the figure at

the end of December. Almost all of these use mobile internet.

MTN Zambia had the country’s

largest market share of 48.3 percent in 2016, while Airtel Zambia had 41.4

percent, according to the finance ministry’s economic report for that year.

Zamtel had the smallest market share with 10.4 percent of mobile subscribers.

MTN, based in Johannesburg, is the

continent’s largest wireless operator by sales and customer numbers.

- BLOOMBERG

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