Cell C has regularised its payments to MTN South Africa for network roaming and has coughed up almost R750-million between July and September.

MTN Group said in a quarterly financial update on Thursday — for the period ended 30 September 2019 — that the payments are “in line with the agreed payment plan”.

At MTN’s interim results, for the period ended 30 June, the group said it had not recognised R393-million of unpaid revenue from its roaming agreement with the financially distressed Cell C. It raised an impairment of R211-million as a result.

“MTN has continued its conservative accounting for the Cell C roaming contract and only payments received during the third quarter were processed, and all against the outstanding balances as at June 2019. We continue to work with Cell C on an expanded network deal and are seeing good progress to date,” it said in the quarterly update.

MTN and Cell C are at an advanced stage of talks to expand the roaming agreement, which could see the former taking a much more active role in the management of the latter’s network infrastructure. Cell C has said it hopes the new deal will allow it to reduce its capital expenditure.

Finalisation of the new roaming deal should pave the way for a further recapitalisation of Cell C before the end of the year. That fresh investment is expected to be led by the Buffet Consortium, whose members include the reclusive property mogul Jonathan Beare.  — © 2019 NewsCentral Media