Thursday, March 4, 2010

Telkom Confirms Bid For TelOne

Telkom South Africa has confirmed that it is in talks with Zimbabwe's state-owned incumbent fixed line operator TelOne with a view to forming a strategic partnership in which the South African national PTO would assume a management role at its Zimbabwean counterpart.

However, Charlotte Mokoena, CEO of Telkom’s Management Services department, told local press that contrary to some reports, Telkom is not bidding to buy a stake in TelOne. Previous announcements by Zimbabwe’s government have implied that Telkom was negotiating a stake purchase in the cash-strapped telco, alongside several other companies interested in partnering the PSTN operator or the country’s struggling state-run mobile operator NetOne.

The list of interested parties includes another South African company, cellular heavyweight MTN Group. Mokoena continued by saying that Telkom ‘is close to concluding an agreement, to provide management services, such as professional engineering and other functional services, to assist TelOne to prepare and build for the future.’

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