THE BATTLE to acquire control of South African mobile operator, Vodacom, is hotting up. While Blighty's Vodafone is quietly confident it can take full control, Nigeria's Globalcom is sniffing around.

Globalcom is Nigeria's second biggest mobile operator – controlled by Mike Adenuga and Nigeria is one of the biggest mobile markets in Africa.

So Vodacom would dearly love to break into that market.
Vodacom, of course, already has a foothold in several African countries like the Congo, Mozambique and Tanzania. Vodafone itself recently bought a large chunk of Ghana Telecom.

Meanwhile, Vodacom has just bought a company, Gateway Communications, which supplies backbone network capacity to African countries using both satellite and fixed-line connexions.

Given that Gateway has offices in 17 African countries, that gives Vodacom a great excuse to talk to other African mobile operators. And maybe buy them.

In the meantime, Telkom – which owns the 50 per cent of Vodacom which Vodafone doesn't – says it is only talking to Vodafone.

But there's others who are interested including Mvelaphanda Holdings – another South African company.

So Vodafone will have to sweat things out for a little longer. µ

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