Telkom, SA’s third largest mobile operator, announced the sale of approximately 4 000 towers and masts earlier this year.
Telkom, South Africa’s third largest mobile operator, has obtained approval from the Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (Icasa) for the disposal of its masts and towers business, Swiftnet, in the final major regulatory requirement for the R6.75 billion deal.
Telkom announced the sale of approximately 4 000 towers and masts earlier this year in a move to focus on its core operations.
Deal
Group CEO Serame Taukobong said the sale of Swiftnet’s portfolio of approximately 4 000 towers and masts marked a significant step in the implementation of the entity’s “transformative strategic journey to focus on core operations while realising the value in non-core assets”.
“This transaction is a pivotal moment in Telkom’s implementation of our data-led strategy under OneTelkom,” said Taukobong. “The sale will strengthen our balance sheet, reduce debt, and provide additional capital. This will enable us to focus our investment on next-generation technology infrastructure.
“We continue to make progress on the alignment of our asset portfolio and our disposal of non-core properties in support of our data-led growth,” Taukobong said.
Swiftnet, a key player in the South African market, has extensive masts and towers infrastructure, with approximately 4 000 installations and leasing co-location space to major mobile network operators.
ALSO READ: Telkom workforce slashed by over 70% in 10 years amid shift to mobile
Group’s interim results
The Group’s recently released interim results for the six months ended September 2024 provided further validation for this strategy, showing mobile service revenue growth of 10.0%, fibre data revenue increases of 15.5% and mobile subscriber base exceeding 22.7 million.”
Meanwhile, as the year draws to a close, new research has found that Microsoft 365, Facebook and the Telkom outages in March 2024 were the most impactful events across Africa and the Middle East.
The research from Downdetector, a website for reporting outages which is owned by Speedtest.net — owner Ookla revealed Telkom suffered the third largest outage in the country.
“The third largest outage in the region was with South African telecommunications provider Telkom. Almost 55 000 users across Africa reported issues to Downdetector when Telkom experienced an outage on May 13,” Ookla revealed.
ALSO READ: Facebook, Microsoft and Telkom on ‘largest outages of 2024’ list
