Telkom, Cell C cling to regime that favours them against big rivals
Voice-call market now small beer for operators, but mobile minnows are still fighting for every scrap
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Voice-call market now small beer for operators, but mobile minnows are still fighting for every scrap
The Independent Communications Authority of SA (Icasa) and partially state-owned Telkom have smoked the peace pipe, after talks that led to Telkom dropping litigation over the spectrum auction.
It seems the long-running saga of South Africa’s auction of high-demand spectrum for mobile broadband may finally have ended on a positive note, raising R14.4 billion (about $960.7 million) for the country’s treasury. The is way above the R8 billion ($533.7 million) a lot of analysts, and indeed the government, had been expecting.
The auctioning of the long-waited spectrum involved six bidders including Cell C, Liquid Telecoms, Rain Networks, MTN, Telkom and Vodacom.
South African regulator ICASA has stated that the main stage of its ongoing mobile broadband spectrum auction has already exceeded its initial estimate of ZAR8 billion (US$531 million).