Etisalat Nigeria has sued MTN Nigeria and Visafone Ltd., challenging MTN’s use of the 800MHZ spectrum following its acquisition of Visafone.
Etisalat said the court action is considered necessary to prevent the use of the spectrum by MTN at this time, as it will entrench the dominance of MTN in the retail data services market.
It noted that MTN Nigeria had been declared dominant by Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) in 2013 and remains dominant in the wholesale leased line and retail voice markets.
“The use of the 800MHz spectrum to deploy broadband services ahead of its competitors, particularly those which, prior to MTNs purchase of Visafone, held similar spectrum bands as MTN, will further entrench MTN’s dominance in the Nigerian telecommunications sector.
“We have, in addition and in line with Section 86 of the Nigerian Communications Act, 2003, engaged the NCC to understand the basis of its decision to approve the acquisition. As you are aware, the matter is already in court; as such, we are restrained from commenting further on the matter,” Etisalat said in a statement on Sunday.
Although the public affairs officer of NCC, Mr. Tony Ojobo, could not be reached at press time, an official of the commission said that NCC saw the acquisition of Visafone by MTN Nigeria as a pure business deal that would impact positively on Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) operations in the country, especially at a time when the CDMA sector is facing serous market challenges; hence it quickly endorsed the deal without reservations.
The source added that the endorsement from NCC was legitimate and came at a time when industry players were calling for a bailout for CDMA operators in the country, noting that NCC did it in good faith, just the way it endorsed the acquisition of three CDMA operators by Visafone shortly after Visafone was licensed in 2007.
Visafone had in 2007, after procuring a Unified Access Service Licence, acquired Cellcom, Bourdex Telecom and ITN to launch its commercial operations. Today, out of over 12 CDMA operators, Visafone is the only active operator.
Before the acquisition of Visafone by MTN Nigeria last month, the GSM operators controlled about 98 per cent of the Nigerian market, while the CDMA controlled 1.58 per cent market share, according to statistics from NCC.
CDMA operators were already going under, leaving Visafone as one of the two surviving CDMA operators, before MTN came to the rescue, the NCC source said.
MTN Corporate Services and Human Resources Executive Amina Oyagbola had said the acquisition of Visafone would help to leverage resources for service enhancement and would deepen the growth and rollout of broadband services across the country in support of the National Broadband Plan, for the benefit of Nigerians.
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