Another Wahala As Etisalat Sues MTN Over Visafone Acquisition

MTN still have a huge dept of over 1 trillion Naira hanging in their neck in Nigeria while in Cameron, they have another huge dept to settle with. Yet the South African GSM giants giants had enough to acquire Visafone in Nigeria.

Now Etisalat, one if the top telecom operators in Nigeria competing with MTN have risen to question why such happened. It seems Etisalat is been envious of MTN but looking clearly at what they tabled as their sole reason for taking MTN to court, you will find some atom of truth in it.

MTN acquired Visafone’s 800MHz spectrum few weeks ago amidst huge depth and going by a reliable source, Etisalat is angered about the transaction and development insisting that MTN, which is the top telecom operator in Nigeria, is gaining too much rights and favoritism in the country and they feared that the transaction would further increase MTN dominance over other telecom competitors
Another reason Etisalat gave which I think is right is that, the bid wasn't thrown open for other players in the field to participate. It was made known after MTN have already done the backyard transactions.

According Etisalat’s Public Relations Regulatory and Corporate Affairs Division Officer “The legal action is considered necessary to prevent the use of the Visafone’s 800MHz spectrum by MTN at this time, as it will entrench the dominance of MTN in the retail data services market.”

Now, this is not the first time telecom operators are taking each others to court because of one case or the other but let's see what will come out of this.