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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.
South Africa’s telecoms sector operators have been waiting for the planned auction of the country’s broadband spectrum. The Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (Icasa) started receiving applications for spectrum licences on 2 October this year. One of the major challenges in re-distributing the valuable lower frequency band is that broadcasters have not migrated away from the frequency that offers the best coverage in homes and buildings. Telkom says it is hesitant to pay for spectrum that is still being used by broadcasters, without a guarantee that the band will be freed for use. Telkom says it is on the back foot because competitors have already been allocated spectrum on this band, while Telkom has no sub-1GHz spectrum. The company told MyBroadband it tried to engage with the regulator over its concerns but was ignored. -Melani Nathan
ICASA will mess up the industry for 20 years — Telkom sues over 5G spectrum auction mybroadband.co.za - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from mybroadband.co.za Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.