The Nigerian telecoms regulator has confirmed that three of the country’s CDMA operators – Starcomms, Multilinks and MTS – have requested permission to merge.

"We are looking at them coming together and becoming a bigger CDMA provider," a director at the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) told Reuters. But she noted that "discussions are on-going and are not concluded yet.”

A merger between the three – largely dormant – Nigeria CDMA players has been on the cards for some time and is seen as an attempt by the participants to better compete against the country’s larger GSM players.

According to reports in August, Multi-Links, Starcomms and MTS are looking at injecting US$200 million to set-up a new JV known as Capcom, which would combine about 20MHz of LTE-suitable bandwidth.

According to Wireless Intelligence, Visafone is the only serious CDMA player still up and running in Nigeria, boasting an estimated 2.5 million customers in Q2 2012, though it does not appear to be involved in the mooted merger deal.

The market is led by GSM operators MTN (43.2 million), Globacom (21.6 million), Airtel (19.3 million) and Etisalat (13 million).