The Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (Icasa) has called on interested parties to lodge written representations in relation to Vodacom’s proposed R7-billion buy-out of converged communications network operator Neotel within 21 days.
Icasa outlined in a notice in the Government Gazette last week that it had received an application for the approval of the deal.
Engineering News Online reported in May that JSE-listed Vodacom had concluded an agreement with India-based Tata Communications for the full buy-out of Neotel, whose employees would be absorbed into Vodacom’s fixed enterprise business.
“Through the combination of these two businesses, the provision of a wider range of business services and much-needed consumer services like fibre-to-the-business and fibre-to-the-home becomes a concrete reality – it will be good for the consumer, good for business and good for the country,” Vodacom group CEO Shameel Joosub said in a statement at the time.
The transaction, which was expected to be concluded by year-end, was expected to accelerate Vodacom’s unified communications strategy as the group integrated its extensive distribution and marketing capabilities with Neotel’s fixed network and product capabilities.
Neotel, which started operations in 2007, currently had access to over 15 000 km of fibre-optic cable nationwide, including 8 000 km of metropolitan fibre in Johannesburg, Cape Town and Durban.
Neotel’s extensive network would also give South Africa’s largest mobile operator the fibre infrastructure scale required to meet government’s ambitions of delivering "broadband for all" by 2020.
Further, the combined entity would be able to leverage Neotel’s assigned spectrum of 2 X 12 MHz of 1800 MHz, 2 X 5 MHz of 800 MHz and 2 X 28 MHz of 3.5 GHz spectrum.
“This spectrum will enable Vodacom to accelerate the roll-out of long-term evolution (LTE) services, providing high-speed, high-quality wireless connectivity to a greater proportion of the South African population,” Joosub explained.