VOD - Vodafone bids $850M for Ethiopia permit; MTN offers $650M - report

A Vodafone (VOD -0.4%) consortium has submitted an $850M bid for a permit to operate in Ethiopia, Bloomberg reports. A rival consortium led by MTN (MTNOY -0.2%) has offered $600M, it says. Those bids are much less than what Ethiopia's government was looking for. The bidding settled into two contenders in late April, after a delayed application process contested by a dozen parties. Vodafone's group includes Kenya's Safaricom and Vodacom Group (VODAF), while MTN is teamed up with The Silk Road Fund of China. Noting a near-30% discount in the MTN group's bid, Ethiopia's Communication Authority's director general says it's possible the government may cancel the process and restart - or it might award one or both licenses. Ethiopia is the last of the big global telecom markets, with an estimated 50.1M mobile connections in a population of about 112M. The government is looking for competitors to incumbent Ethio Telecom.

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Vodafone bids $850M for Ethiopia permit; MTN offers $650M - report