High Court orders suspension of spectrum auction
Communications and Digital Technologies Minister, Stella Ndabeni-Abrahams, has noted the judgment handed down by the High Court on the auctioning of spectrum.
The High Court in Pretoria on Monday ordered the Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (Icasa) to halt the planned auction of radio frequency spectrum licences, pending a hearing of contentions raised by broadcaster e.tv and Telkom.
In a statement on Tuesday, Ndabeni-Abrahams said the ministry remains open to mediation for the parties involved in order to find a common solution through alternative dispute resolution outside of the court process.
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The author, Dobek Pater, argues that there could be 43% 5G population coverage in South Africa by 2025
A new report by Africa Analysis, the ICT market research and analysis firm, has shed light on how we can expect the 5G market to evolve in South Africa over the next several years.
The report is being published ahead of the high-demand spectrum auction planned by communications regulator Icasa for the end of March 2021. Icasa also plans to license the Wireless Open-Access Network (Woan) operator around the same time. That’s if lawsuits instituted against Icasa by Telkom and MTN do not cause yet another delay in assigning this prized spectrum. Both operators, which have submitted applications to participate in the spectrum auction, are not happy with aspects of the auction process.
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It looks like the long-awaited switch-off of South Africa’s analogue television transmitters to free up spectrum and transfer viewers to digital TV is finally going to happen.
Last week the country’s president Cyril Ramaphosa said that he expected the province-by-province process to start this March and be completed by the end of March 2022.
Like a number of countries in Africa, South Africa missed the original deadline set by the International Telecommunication Union for completion of the switchover process.
Given that this was meant to happen in June 2015, it’s probably no surprise that a year ago the country’s Portfolio Committee on Communications raised concerns over the slow implementation pace of the Broadcasting Digital Migration policy by the Department of Communications. A new delivery model had already been developed in 2018 in an attempt to speed up the process.