South African wireless Internet service providers yesterday called on the Independent Communications Authority of SA (ICASA) to address the allocation of unlicensed spectrum for telecoms usage.
During the Future Wireless Technologies Forum II, held at the Indaba Hotel in Johannesburg yesterday, most speakers were in unison that unlicensed spectrum will boost entrepreneurship and innovation in the country.
According to Dr Marten Scheffer, GM of network engineering at Neotel, any innovator or consumer can use unlicensed spectrum just by following technical rules - without having to comply with a maze of regulations that apply to licensed services.
This low-regulation system lets innovators deliver millions of unlicensed offerings such as WiFi hotspots, medical equipment, industrial/logistics/inventory systems, wireless headsets, cordless phones, remote car door openers, RFID and wireless keyboards, he noted.
During the forum, the industry players raised concerns around the 24GHz, 17GHz, 5GHz and 2.4GHz bands, which they unanimously said were being underutilised.
"We have seen an explosion in unlicensed bands in the past five to 10 years. The number of devices that support unlicensed spectrum have taken over the market," said Scheffer.
"It is estimated, at the moment, that the US spends about $43 billion a year on unlicensed spectrum-enabled devices. These are mostly WiFi-enabled devices, smart devices, traffic devices, etc."
He pointed out that SA needs a very open and entrepreneurial approach to unlicensed bands. However, Scheffer noted that if unlicensed spectrum is not regulated to some degree and fair distribution is not understood, there will be chaos, thereby decreasing the much-needed entrepreneurial growth.
"I think what we need from the regulator is to regulate the fair distribution of spectrum and monitor congestion, but not holding back the spectrum."
Also speaking at the forum, Nick Ehrke, sales director, Southern Africa at wireless broadband services provider Radwin, said disruption in the unlicensed spectrum space is now a reality, especially in the age of the Internet of everything.
He believes that although fibre rollout is steadily progressing in SA, the solution has a lot of challenges. "The reality is operators have to go into unlicensed spectrum because fibre is too expensive, and it takes too long to deploy," Ehrke said.
Chris Sutherland, VOIP product manager at wireless networking solutions distributor, Miro Distribution, said SA is rapidly running out of spectrum and it's not getting any better. Users are demanding faster speeds at cheaper rates, which exacerbates the situation.
"The 24GHz band is technically an unlicensed band but we are not using it for what we need it to be," said Sutherland.
Describing the status for the 24GHz band in SA, Sutherland said it is being used in automotive applications for collision detection, obstacle detection, blind spot monitoring and also assisting in automatic cruise control.
Advocating for the 5GHz band, Arno Hart, telecommunications network developer at the Tertiary Education and Research Network of SA, said ICASA must allow more intensive application of unlicensed uses and harmonise rules of usage among operators across various 5GHz bands while protecting the incumbents.
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