MTN's IHS Towers Takeover Advances With Regulator's Fair-Access Conditions
MTN's acquisition of a stake in IHS Towers is advancing following Competition Commission clearance, with the regulator now attaching fair-access conditions to ensure rival operators retain equitable use of the shared tower infrastructure. The conditions are being described as a continent-wide precedent for how regulators govern tower ownership when an incumbent operator controls infrastructure shared with competitors.
MTN-IHS: now watch Nigeria's 30% condition meet South Africa's fair-access one
South Africa's watchdog has done something specific: it has made IHS operationally independent of MTN and locked in equal pricing for every rival operator — on paper, permanently.
That is a harder condition than it sounds. 'Fair and non-discriminatory' only means something if someone is checking the invoices.
The more interesting pressure point is how this sits alongside Nigeria's 30% selldown ruling. One regulator said who can own towers; another has said how the owner must behave. Together they sketch what continent-wide tower governance could actually look like — if both conditions hold under pressure from the operator that now controls 29,000 of them.
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- MTN’s IHS Towers takeover advances as regulator demands fair access · techcabal.com · T1