Johannesburg – Vodacom yesterday stood by its roaming agreement with Rain as it announced strong financial results during he six months ended in September, including an R7.6 billion interim dividend on the back of solid revenue growth.
Partly state-owned Telkom last month approached the Competition Tribunal to declare the suite of spectrum arrangements between Vodacom and Rain as a merger that should have been notifiable in terms of the Competition Act. Speaking during the group’s virtual interim results presentation, Vodacom chief executive Shameel Joosub said the Rain arrangement was no different than the agreement Telkom had with Vodacom.
“Telkom is roaming on the Vodacom network, Cell C is roaming on both the Vodacom and MTN networks. We have made no secret that because we are capacity constrained and Rain had the capacity, we bought capacity from them through a roaming arrangement,” said Joosub, adding that the arrangements had been tested by both the Competition Commission and the Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (Icasa).
“We see it as a ploy to get a bigger share of the spectrum,” added Joosub. Icasa last month began the process of making spectrum available to reduce the cost of communication, especially data.
