Friday’s announcement that Telkom is in talks to be acquired by MTN is not the first time these two telecoms operators have flirted with some sort of transaction (either formally or informally). And it’s certainly not the first instance of Telkom looking to M&A activity to solve its situation of being sub-scale in mobile.
But the current potential takeover is about one thing only: Telkom’s market-leading fibre network.
Read: Telkom shares soar over 26% as MTN wants to buy it
Its wholesale Openserve division has more than 169 000km of fibre in the ground across long-distance links, metro rings and fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) or -business (FTTB) deployments.
By contrast, MTN’s fibre network in South Africa is likely not much more than 25 000km (the figure from around a year ago was 23 000km).
Had Vodacom not concluded a complex but smart transaction with Remgro’s CIVH…
