In addition to its bid to buy a stake in Tunisie Telecom, MTN Group this month also looks set to unveil expansion plans into the Southern African market of Botswana.
Sources close to MTN intimated on Tuesday that the South African cellular services provider was apparently planning to enter the Botswana market, where Mascom Wireless and Orange Botswana mobile operators serve 576 000 customers.
MTN, currently in a closed period and trading under cautionary announcements, was unable to comment while Orange was not immediately available for comment.
But the South African group is on record as saying it wants to expand into foreign emerging markets, particularly in Africa and the Middle East.
The South African cellular group confirmed on October 4 that it had submitted a pre-qualification application to bid for a holding in Tunisia Telecom which runs both fixed-line and mobile operations in the North African country — which would be its first operation outside sub-Sahara.
According to research house BMI-TechKnowledge, Tunisia has 5,2-million cellphone users of which 3,5-million are served by state-held Tunisia Telecom’s mobile arm while Orange Botswana has a 28% market share in a densely-populated country of 1,8-million inhabitants.
A Johannesburg-based telecommunications analyst said an announcement on
the Tunisian opportunity was due “in any event”, adding that he expected MTN to buy a stake in Orange Botswana as opposed to getting a new licence as that would not be viable.
Another analyst was of the view that MTN’s second cautionary issued on October 20 related to an licencing opportunity in Egypt where Vodacom’s 35% shareholder — UK-based Vodafone Group already has a foothold.
However, the first analyst noted that Egypt was an unlikely possibility given the fact that Vodafone Egypt was promised that the duopoly would be in existence until 2007 after which the government would be looking to licence the third mobile operator.
In Egypt, Vodafone has a 46% market share or 4,3-million subscribers while Orascom holds the balance in a market BMI-TechKnowledge estimates at 9,4-million by the end of 2005 up from last year’s 8,2-million.
The first analyst said satisfying the Tunisian conditions should not come as a surprise considering that MTN is already operational in eight countries where it runs “successful” cellphone networks in addition to the Ugandan fixed-line network.
Turning to the densely-populated Botswana, the analyst said the French-owned Orange might be looking at exiting some of its GSM operations which “in this instance work in MTN’s favour”.
In another development, MTN is awaiting a decision on the Nigerian privatisation transaction which would see 51% of state-held Nitel going to one of six bidders on the shortlist including Telkom and Orascom which has a stake in Egypt’s market leader Mobinil.
The company is due to release its interim results on November 17. – I-Net Bridge