South African telecoms operator Vodacom is reportedly mulling an offer for state-owned telecoms infrastructure company Broadband Infraco. Vodacom’s CEO Shameel Joosub reportedly told Bloomberg: ‘When our proposed acquisition of Neotel lapsed earlier this year, we said that our ambition to increase the rollout of fibre-based broadband services to customers remains.’ The executive was also quoted as saying that acquiring an asset like Broadband Infraco – which manages infrastructure rollouts to underserved areas on behalf of the government and has roughly 15,000km of fibre-optic cabling – would help Vodacom achieve this target.
As previously reported by TeleGeography’s CommsUpdate, in June 2015 struggling Broadband Infraco was directed by its majority shareholder, the Department of Telecommunications and Postal Services (DTPS), to undertake a valuation exercise in preparation for its possible sale, while in February this year it emerged that Infraco and state-backed Telkom were in talks over ‘possible collaboration’ on infrastructure projects.