AINMT said that its Norwegian network operator ice.net has agreed to acquire a B2C customer base from an undisclosed Norwegian mobile phone operator. After migration, ice.net is expected to have acquired a net amount of minimum 40,000 B2C customers. Ice.net will pay approximately NOK 75 million for the customer base, plus a potential bonus, dependent on the number of subscribers successfully migrated to Ice.
The deal is expected to close on 12 July, with migration of customers expected between August and October. The transaction does not require competition authority approval. The acquisition is fully financed by the recent equity injection into AINMT Scandinavia Holdings.
AINMT CEO JD Fouchard said that Ice.net is the fastest growing mobile network operator in Scandinavia. This acquisition will be a valuable addition to an already rapidly growing customer footprint in Norway, he added.
Local publication InsideTelecom.no reported that the customers may have come from the MVNO Hello. It contacted other providers with a similar size customer base, such as NextGenTel and Chili Mobil, and they denied the sale, leaving only Hello as the likely candidate.
Hello's founder Nadir Nalbant, who returned as CEO of the company earlier this year, declined to comment. According to regulatory data, Hello had 53,000 customers at the end of 2016. Last year Altibox acquired a 50 percent stake in the provider.
