The Competition Commission said on Tuesday that it has reached an agreement with both Vodacom and Maziv, which also owns Dark Fibre Africa, that could see the deal proceed, despite both the commission and the Competition Tribunal's earlier findings that it should not be allowed to happen on competition grounds.
The new "revised conditions - substantially remedy the competition concerns raised by the commission in its recommendation to the tribunal that the merger be prohibited. This agreement follows constructive engagements between the commission and the merger parties to remedy the deficiencies in the previous conditions identified by the tribunal in its prohibition of the merger," the commission said in a statement.
According to the commission, there were three main competition concerns that were not adequately addressed by the proposed conditions at the time of concluding the tribunal hearings.
First is the horizontal reduction in competition between fixed-wireless access and fibre to the home FTTH. "The conditions positioned to address this concern were that Vodacom would offer FWA where it rolled out 5G and that it would price it "competitively". However, the commitments on roll-out of 5G sites and roll-out of FTTH were insufficient to incentivise the parties to encourage consumer access at competitive prices and ensure third party access to FTTH.
The revised conditions also introduce changes to Maziv's governance structure that limit the merged entity's incentives to foreclose competitors.