Kenya's Safaricom and France Telecom's Orange unit have announced a joint infrastructure management company within the next three months, the two companies said in a press release this week. Analysts on Thursday said they hope other telecommunications companies and operators will follow suit to help develop the IT infrastructure in the country. “With the companies under a lot of pressure to make services cheaper as price wars hit the country over the past few months, it is nice to see companies coming together to make things happen,” said Khalil Makhlila, a Mombasa-based analyst. According to Safaricom's CEO Bob Collymore, the new agreement will help reduce operational costs and increase customers ability to have cheaper services. “The two companies have over 4,000 towers between themselves and we expect that in addition to the initial equity and debt financing, each partner will contribute some of its existing infrastructure into a common pool,” Orange's CEO Mickael Ghossein said in a statement. “We also expect to consolidate future needs through central planning and deployment so as to take advantage of the economies of scale presented by this deal.” BM
