The strategic partnership is expected to lead to significant benefits by enabling Visafone to focus on its core business of providing mobile services and solutions bringing in operational efficiency, and enhanced quality of service to its customers. It will also provide IHS the platform of consolidating its telecom infrastructure business and industry leadership position with more than 800 owned sites under collocation in Nigeria and several thousands of sites under management.

Global best practice in mobile telephone business has evolved in the direction of operators increasing operational efficiency by leveraging the sale and leaseback of tower infrastructure, which has led to the rapid growth of telecom infrastructure companies resulting in significant synergies between operators.

Visafone Communications Limited, the largest CDMA mobile telephony company in Africa began its operations in 2008. The company, which made a move to acquire Multilinks Telkom a few months ago before is a young dynamic company and has in a short time emerged as a CDMA leader in the Nigerian telecoms terrain. It is currently involved with various strategic initiatives that will position it towards attaining a subscriber base of 10 million within the next three years.

IHS is the leading telecom infrastructure provider in sub Saharan Africa with operations in Nigeria, Ghana, Sudan and other African countries, currently manages more than 3,500 towers. It is listed on the Nigerian Stock Exchange and has recently added the IFC, Investec and FMO to its strong investors’ base.

The company had last year called for a review of business models in the nation's telecoms sector. It stressed that telecommunications operators in the country needed to adopt collocation as the best option for quicker network rollout that will reduce both operating and capital costs.

http://www.thisdaylive.com/articles/visafone-his-seal-67bn-tower-infrastructure-sharing-deal/95921/