The Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (ICASA) has announced that it will be extending the deadline for the public to submit comments regarding the second phase of its planned spectrum licensing process.
The original deadline for submitting written representations was September 19, 2022; however, it has been extended so that the public now has until the end of this month to do so.
ICASA is soliciting feedback from the general public over the spectrum information memorandum (IM) that it has prepared in order to initiate the second phase of what it refers to as “the International Mobile Telecommunications (IMT) licensing process.” The new date for deadline is September 30th, 2022.
“This update was implemented in response to demands from a number of stakeholders, and it makes it possible for all parties involved to participate with the IM and provide contributions that are valuable. During the second phase of the IMT licensing process, the IM is looking for input on the IMT radio frequency spectrum bands from interested parties and stakeholders. This input will be considered by the authority “the statement came from the telecoms regulator earlier today.
After announcing in August that it was getting ready to license new low- and mid-frequency spectrum to providers of broadband services, the ICASA has now decided to extend the licenses for those frequencies.
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The Spectrum capacity
Following the conclusion of ICASA’s historic high-demand spectrum auction in March 2022, the second phase of the spectrum is scheduled to begin around six months later.
“The second phase of the IMT spectrum licensing process will provide licensees with additional capacity to meet the ongoing demand for capacity growth in mobile services,” said Peter Zimri, a councillor for ICASA. “This will allow licensees to meet the ongoing demand for capacity growth in mobile services.”
According to ICASA, the ongoing expansion of data traffic dictated the demand for new spectrum, and the regulator anticipates that this process will be finished by March 2023 at the latest. Increasing access to broadband across the nation is the primary goal of the process of licensing the low and mid-frequency bands.
The FCC has stated that its goal with the second phase is to eliminate the digital divide and discrepancies in access to broadband networks between urban and rural areas.
According to a statement released by ICASA in August, “the goal of this notice is to collect input from interested stakeholders regarding the International Mobile Telecommunications (IMT) radio frequency bands the authority proposes to license during the second phase of the IMT licensing processing.”
Zimri added that the current information memorandum is primarily focused on moving forward with the licensing of “Lot 9” in the 800 MHz radio frequency band, which was unsold in March, as well as some mid-band IMT radio frequency channels that are currently available. He stated that this is the primary focus of the current information memorandum.
The governing body stated that all interested parties are required to provide written representations to the authority by no later than 4 p.m. on the day of the deadline and that no additional extensions will be granted. The electronic version of the representations must be formatted in Microsoft Word.
The Spectrum Development Policy
The South African government recently released a policy document titled “Next Generation Radio Frequency Spectrum,” in which they proposed the sharing and trading of the radio frequency spectrum. This extension comes as a result of those proposals.
The document cites that spectrum sharing and trading will be a good option to manage the country’s spectrum resources better and assist small, medium, and micro enterprises (SMMEs) in better participating in the telecoms sector. This will be possible through better management of the country’s spectrum resources.
During a press briefing on the document, the Minister of Communications and Digital Technologies, Khumbudzo Ntshavheni, stated that “the current spectrum regime of South Africa continues to exclude SMMEs and new entrants in the data market in favor of a few market players.” This statement was made during a discussion of the document.
According to Ntshavheni’s explanation, “Through this strategy, we intend to employ spectrum management measures that stimulate SMME involvement and the rise of new entrants to the ICT industry.”
According to Connecting Africa, Ntshavheni stated that the spectrum policy “supports an effective and efficiency in exploitation of spectrum resource” and that “hoarding of the spectrum is not permissible.”