South Africa's Competition Commission Approves MTN's Acquisition of IHS Tower Stake
South Africa's Competition Commission has approved MTN's acquisition of a stake in IHS Towers, a transaction that reshapes tower ownership across South Africa and the broader African telecoms infrastructure market. The clearance removes a key regulatory barrier to MTN consolidating its infrastructure position on the continent.
MTN-IHS: the condition that decides what this deal actually means
South Africa's competition watchdog has cleared MTN's full takeover of IHS Towers — but only with a hard condition baked in: IHS must stay operationally independent and offer every other mobile network the same access, on the same terms, that MTN gets.
That single clause is doing a lot of work.
Without it, MTN would own the towers every rival depends on, and set the price. With it, the infrastructure stays genuinely shared — at least on paper. Whether the Competition Tribunal enforces that promise in practice is the real question this clearance leaves open.
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- MTN’s IHS takeover deal gets CompCom approval · itweb.co.za · T2