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Johannesburg. – Ivory Coast will cut the number of phone companies that operate in West Africa’s third-largest mobile market to encourage more investment in faster mobile Internet.

The government has ordered the three smallest companies to merge before their licenses expire in 2016, Bruno Kone, minister of telecommunications, said in an interview in Abidjan, the commercial capital.

The trio will lose their licences if they don’t combine, he said. Seven companies, including units of MTN Group Ltd and Orange SA, operate in Ivory Coast.

“We are limiting the number of operators because we cannot move to 4G and 5G with some of the operators lagging behind,” Kone (55) said on Monday.

Fewer operators will be able to invest more revenue to increase mobile broadband Internet speeds from 3G to 4G, which offers faster connections, Kone said. The three smallest operators, which control about half the spectrum, have limited revenue because they have 6 percent of the nation’s 22 million subscribers, Kone said.

MTN Ivory Coast has started informal discussions with the telecommunications ministry and will begin official talks once it’s heard the renewal conditions, Chief Executive Officer Wim Vanhellputte said in an e-mailed statement yesterday.

The three smallest companies are Comium Group’s KoZ, the Libyan African Investment Portfolio’s Green Network and Ivory Coast Cafe Mobile. KoZ has started talks to merge with the other two, Mohame Salame, a spokesman, said by phone Tuesday. Spokesmen for Green Network and Cafe Mobile declined to comment.

“These operators do not comply with the specifications. The government has given them three months to merge,” Kone said. – Bloomberg.