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MTN sued in Nigeria over Visafone purchase

Lagos - Emirates Telecommunications Group is suing Nigeria competitor MTN Group over plans by Africa’s biggest wireless company to buy local Internet provider Visafone Communications.

The lawsuit centres on MTN’s potential use of Visafone’s 800 megahertz of spectrum, Abu Dhabi-based Etisalat’s Nigeria unit said in an e-mailed statement on Monday.

“Not to challenge will entrench the dominance of MTN in the data services market,” the company said.

MTN Nigeria has been served with court papers and the phone company was in court last week about the matter, spokesperson Funso Aina said by text message. Tony Ojobo, a spokesperson for the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), the regulator that approved the Visafone deal, said the NCC hasn’t received any official correspondence from Etisalat questioning the approval of the MTN acquisition.

In 2013, the NCC said MTN, the biggest mobile-phone company in Nigeria, had become dominant in the mobile-voice market. The South African company is also in talks with the regulator to settle a $3.9bn fine for missing a deadline to disconnect unregistered subscribers last year.

MTN had 62.5 million Nigerian subscribers as of the end of September, according to the NCC’s website. Globacom and Airtel Nigeria had about 31 million each, while Etisalat was the country’s fourth-biggest operator with 23 million customers.

MTN shares declined 0.8% to R140 as of 12:04 p.m. in Johannesburg, valuing the company at R259bn.

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