“Some internet companies are fast to sell.Others just have fast internet.”


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.

Don't want to be merged?

Be Smart

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