After four years of fighting to get their fibre merger over the line, Vodacom and Remgro have received final approval from SA’s telecoms regulator.
The telecoms and investment group told their respective shareholders that the Independent Communication Authority of SA (Icasa) had approved the transaction and all other conditions precedent had been met.
The transaction will be implemented on December 1.
This deal has been a long time in the making, having received conditional approval from Icasa three years ago in November 2022.
The major hurdle for the two groups along the way was mainly related to competition and market structure issues. But those appear to have been outweighed by the prospect of expanding access to high-speed broadband connectivity, the deal receiving backing from trade, industry and competition minister Parks Tau.
Vodacom’s acquisition of a 30% interest in Remgro’s fibre business Maziv was rejected by the Competition Tribunal in October 2024.
The transaction, announced in November 2021, had been investigated — for almost almost 22 months — by the Competition Commission, which recommended that the deal be blocked.
After more legal wrangling, the merger received approval from the Competition Appeal Court in August this year.
Before facing the Competition Appeals Court over their R13bn fibre merger, Vodacom and Remgro amended the terms of their agreement. Under the new configuration, Remgro said its telecom unit, Community Investment Ventures Holdings (CIVH) operating as Maziv, was valued at R36bn, inclusive of internet service provider Herotel.
According to the original terms, SA’s largest mobile operator was to take a 30% stake in Maziv, together worth an estimated R13bn with the option of 40%. That option is now down to 34.95%.
Vodacom boss Shameel Joosub has been vocal about the headache of getting such a deal done in SA.
“You can’t spend four years in a regulatory process for a fibre deal. Honestly, it’s ridiculous,” Joosub said during the Bloomberg Africa Business Summit in Johannesburg last week.
He sees such transactions as helping to push up digital infrastructure investment in Africa.
“We see ourselves as a sector of sectors. Telecoms is an enabling technology. SA is a window into Africa where we can attract investment with the cost of borrowing coming down. That gives us the opportunity to take more of our technologies into the continent.”
At the least, the Maziv deal is expected to boost fibre infrastructure investment in SA.
Vodacom said it was committed to investing R14bn in SA’s digital infrastructure, including rolling out fibre to 1-million homes in low-income areas and creating 10,000 jobs.
Maziv had committed to capital expenditure of at least R10bn over five years, including rolling out fibre infrastructure past at least 1-million new homes in low-income areas.
Icasa’s nod includes the issue of an individual electronic communications network services (I-ECNS) licence. This licence is required for companies to build and operate their own physical network infrastructure, such as fibre-optic cables or towers, on a provincial or national scale in SA.
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