MTN Nigeria and IHS Towers are locking horns.
The federal government of Nigeria has issued a stern warning to telecommunications giants MTN NG and IHS Towers, asking them to not disrupt telecom services amidst their ongoing collocation dispute.
What dispute? The conflict revolves around the lease of telecom towers. In September, MTN NG announced that its tower operations would be run by the Nigerian subsidiary of the American Towers Corp (ATC) from 2025. ATC will be taking over from IHS Towers—whose lease to run MTN’s 2,500 network sites—will expire in 2024 and 2025.
MTN NG recently finalised the deal with ATC asserting that this transition would not disrupt the country’s network connectivity. However, IHS Towers has expressed concerns, suggesting potential disruptions, and offered improved commercial terms to MTN in an attempt to retain the contract. MTN NG has not budged, reiterating the finality of the agreement.
There was a boardroom fight: Prior to this development, there was an ongoing boardroom fight between IHS Towers and MTN Group over MTN’s request for more control of the tower company. MTN Group holds 26% of IHS Towers but only controls 20% of the voting share. MTN had said that it could not sell its non-voting shares and wanted its stake in the company to be reflected in its voting power. However, IHS Towers said in response that the proposals were not in the company’s best interests.
What now? Concerned about the lingering collocation dispute, the government is threatening severe sanctions in case of service quality degradation. The Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) has also issued a gag order, restraining the disputing parties from making inflammatory public statements.
