Out-Law News 2 min. read
23 Mar 2016, 3:38 pm
A report released by the state-run Tanzania Communications Regulatory Authority, quoted by Reuters, said internet users in the country rose 52% to 17.26 million last year.
The report highlighted increased activity in the country's telecoms sector, and coincided with a separate announcement that Airtel Tanzania Limited, a subsidiary of India's Bharti Airtel Limited, has signed a definitive agreement to sell around 1,350 of its communications towers in the country to the US-based telecoms operator and developer American Tower Corporation (ATC).
Under the agreement, announced on 21 March, ATC said it "may acquire up to approximately 100 additional sites currently in development for an additional consideration". Airtel will be the "anchor tenant" on the portfolio under a lease with a 10-year initial term, ATC said.
The transaction is expected to close during the first half of 2016, subject to closing conditions and regulatory approvals, ATC said.
Bharti Airtel's chief executive officer and managing director for Africa, Christian de Faria, said: "The proposed transaction is a continuation of our stated philosophy of divesting passive infrastructure assets and promoting sharing of towers to enhance operational efficiencies that will further the overall growth of telecom services."
De Fari said Airtel "remains committed to Tanzania and will continue to invest in its operations and serve customers with world-class services".
Global mobile operators' association the GSMA said in a report last year that the mobile industry in sub-Saharan Africa "continues to scale rapidly, reaching 367 million subscribers in mid-2015. Migration to higher speed networks and smartphones continues apace, with mobile broadband connections set to increase from just over 20% of the connection base today to almost 60% by 2020".
The GSMA said the mobile sector "also makes a substantial contribution to the funding of the region's public sector, with approximately $15 billion raised in 2014 in the form of general taxation, which is set to rise to $20 billion by 2020".
A 2015 report by the Boston Consulting Group said the value of sub-Saharan Africa's mobile money market could grow to $1.5 billion over the next four years as Africa's 'unbanked' use their phones for a variety of financial transactions.
"The use of mobile financial services in sub-Saharan Africa to do such things as pay utility bills and send money to relatives could produce an estimated $1.5bn in fees for mobile-money providers by 2019," the report said.
According to the report, there could be some 400 million unique mobile phone subscribers in the region by 2019 and almost 150 million "traditionally-banked sub-Saharan Africans".
"That will leave some 250 million sub-Saharan Africans aged 15 or older who have incomes of $500 or more and mobile phones but no traditional bank account. This gives a sense of the potential market for mobile financial services," the report said.
Swedish-listed telecoms firm Millicom announced last year (2-page / 314 KB PDF) that customers of its Tigo Pesa mobile money service in Tanzania would be the first in Africa to be able to transact with users of all the mobile money networks operating in the country following an agreement with Vodacom's M-Pesa service.
