> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.businessbagel.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # The company MTN pays to use its old cell towers could soon belong to MTN - URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/mtn-ihs-towers-takeover-commission-recommends/ - Published: 2026-10-02T03:45:00.000Z - Updated: 2026-10-02T03:44:59.000Z - Description: The Competition Commission has recommended that the Tribunal approve MTN's takeover of IHS Towers, with conditions to protect the rival networks that rent space on the same towers. - Author: Christian Maidman - Tags: Companies, Business Bagel News MTN has spent the past few years paying rent on cell towers it used to own. Its South African business sold 5,713 tower sites to IHS Towers in a R6.4 billion sale-and-leaseback announced in November 2021: IHS took the towers, and MTN took the cash and a lease to keep using them. In February MTN made an offer for the rest of IHS. The tower company's board accepted $8.50 a share for the roughly three-quarters MTN does not already own, about $2.2 billion in all, which would take MTN from about 24.7% of IHS to all of it and take IHS off the New York Stock Exchange. On Wednesday the Competition Commission recommended that the Competition Tribunal approve the takeover, with conditions. ## The rent MTN wants to keep IHS is a big landlord. It has nearly 29,000 towers in Africa, serving mobile networks across five of MTN's key markets, and MTN is far and away its biggest tenant: Business Day puts MTN's share of IHS's revenue at about 70%. Most of the money IHS collects, in other words, comes from the company trying to buy it. Owning IHS outright turns that rent into money moving from one MTN pocket to another. MTN's own case for the deal is that it keeps the margin it currently pays IHS, picks up the rent other networks pay, and gets more predictable costs. Chief executive Ralph Mupita called it "a unique opportunity to buy back our towers". The two have haggled over that rent before: in August 2024 they renegotiated MTN's tower leases in Nigeria, which cut how much MTN has to pay in dollars. Part of the bill is effectively prepaid. Roughly $1.1 billion of the price is cash IHS already holds, so MTN is partly buying the company with the company's own money. The balance comes from MTN's cash and new debt; it will not issue new shares, and expects its borrowing to rise for a while. ## Landlord to the competition The Commission's concern is plain enough. MTN is a mobile network, and IHS sells tower space to mobile networks, so the deal raises both competition and public interest questions. Once it closes, MTN's rivals would be renting tower space from a company MTN owns. The recommended conditions are mostly about those other tenants. IHS must give every network, and its customers that are not networks, fair and equal access to its towers; existing leases must be renewed on fair terms, with no customer treated worse than MTN South Africa; and IHS has to stay operationally independent. The conditions also protect jobs, ownership by historically disadvantaged people, and small businesses that want a part in new tower sites. None of it is final yet. The Tribunal makes the decision, and the Commission's statement does not say how long the conditions would run or when the Tribunal is expected to rule. Until it does, MTN stays a tenant on towers it once owned.