Benin suspended two of its four mobile phone operators yesterday and threatened to silence their networks from Thursday if they did not sign new contracts that include a $50 million, 500% rise in the operator fee.
The West African country's Telecommunications Regulation Authority issued a statement on Friday suspending the operating contracts of SA-listed MTN and Atlantique Telecom's "Moov" service with effect from Monday, saying both companies had changed their names without its permission.
Both networks would be able to continue providing call services until Thursday, when they would cease operating unless they had signed new conventions, the regulator said.
It said the new licences were necessary since MTN renamed the Areeba network under its eponymous MTN brand, and Atlantique Telecom, controlled by Emirates Telecommunications (Etisalat), relaunched its Benin service under the Moov brand it offers in several other countries in the region.
The regulator said the texts of the new licences would also include an increase in the one-off licence fee payable by operators to the state, which it plans to impose on all four of Benin's operators.
"There are some regulatory matters that have been raised in Benin and the MTN Group is currently engaged in discussions to resolve those with the Ministry of Communications there. MTN cannot comment further at this stage," said MTN spokesperson Nozipho January-Bardill.
Senior Moov executives were unavailable for comment.
The regulator, created by the government of president Thomas Boni Yayi, who was elected in 2006, said in May it planned to increase the operator fee to 30 billion CFA francs from five billion under the existing contracts.
The increase would be retroactive, meaning each company would pay an additional 25 billion CFA francs to the state, although no deadline for payment had been set.
Benin's two other licensed mobile operators are Bell Benin, owned by local businessman Issa Salifou, and Libercom, which is a subsidiary of state-owned fixed-line company Benin Telecom.
MTN had 514 000 subscribers in Benin in March 2007, up 8% on the previous quarter, according to company figures published in May. Benin has a population of around eight million.
Subscriber figures for the other operators were not available.
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