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Cape Town - Orange has no plans to buy struggling South African mobile operators though the French-based telecoms firm is open to discussions in the local market.
"Orange has no discussions with anybody to buy nobody in South Africa," Sèbastien Crozier, Orange Horizons CEO told Fin24.
"A good question is: When you have a huge country as you have in South Africa, is there a necessity to have three or four different networks?" he added.
In SA, mobile operators Vodacom and MTN have a dominant market share, while junior operators Cell C and Telkom Mobile are fighting to build their subscriber base.
Cell C in particular is under pressure and the company has been aggressively driving down the cost of communication in an effort to gain market share.
As for Cell C in SA, he said that while the company was not looking to buy an operator, it was open to discussions.
"We know that some players are struggling in the mobile industry, but if they need any kind of help, they can call us. We are very open to negotiate with corporations," Crozier chuckled.
Mobile partnerships
International organisation the GSMA has expressed its concern at mobile operators in Africa that are on an unsustainable path.
"It's very important that you continue to see investment in the sector, not only on mobile money, but also on 3G and then 4G deployment," Anne Bouverot, director general of the GSMA told Fin24.
Crozier said that Orange had a number of partnerships throughout Africa where the operator was increasing coverage in areas where capital expenditure was inappropriate for individual players.
"In many countries, even Orange merges its network infrastructure with competitors to increase the coverage and to have a better customer experience."
Rural areas are often not as well covered by mobile networks as urban areas, and the model of sharing infrastructure has proved ideal to expand coverage at lower cost.
"We have what we call an Orange Alliance; it’s a strategic programme to help operators where don’t have capitalistic links.
"We help them to increase the quality of the network without investing. We help them with better marketing; we help them with international interconnection. We have many tools," said Crozier.
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