According to the article some of the bigger South African ISPs seem interested in purchasing the ISP that is for sale.

But what does this mean if you are a customer of an ISP that is for sale? Looking into the crystal ball… it’s still difficult to tell. The ways in which the purchaser can extract value from the purchase would be to move customers over to their own base, keep the brand alive but merge the networks to reduce costs or something entirely different.

On sales, mergers and takeovers.

SA has seen a number of mergers, acquisitions and takeovers. Here’s a trip down the internet archives.

Takealot/Kalahari:

Originally a sale to Takealot, Kalahari ended up being closed down in the name of scale:

The move was driven by the fact that, without scale, SA etailers simply can’t compete successfully against the local brick and mortar retailers and foreign companies such as Amazon and Alibaba. – Source Takealot

The merger was originally approved by the competition commission as long as no more than 200 people didn’t lose their jobs.

MWEB/Polka:

Way back when Polka was a low cost ISP that was a division of MWEB, but ended up being downloaded to the archives of the internet and is now a chapter in MWEB’s history.

MWEB/Tiscali:

Anyone remember Tiscali? MWEB also bought them back in 2004 for R320M (excluding their cellular operations which was bought by Vodacom).

Consolidation in the SA Fibre Market

This year CIVH (Remgro) completed their acquisition of Vumatel. Good news is they will have to continue to be an Open Access network.

Consolidation of the market is the natural next step in the FTTH space.

The theme in the market is certainly consolidation, bigger scale means companies can achieve better efficiencies.

For those who are less than thrilled about the sale of their ISP, we’re offering a FREE migration on Octotel lines on 100Mbps lines and above – valued at R850.

Why choose Atomic?

We’re not another heartless corporate. We are a group of passionate network engineers, designers, nerds and full stack developers building a fiercely independent ISP – nobody has time to deal with evil empires.

Atomic makes fibre internet epic, so busy people who demand great internet can trust that they are getting the best fibre experience at their home and business. We built the kind of network we always wanted to use and we’re inviting you to join!

What makes us different?

• Fibre only, no legacy, no distraction
• Open Access only, no mixed incentives
• Focus on small business and techies
• Founder run, a group of motivated people
• No Call Centres, we don’t like to keep people waiting
• We give 20% discount on monthly bills, find out more
• We built and run our own network, no outsourcing
• Transparent, proactive, no BS
• We’re on a mission to make customers smile!