The Independent Communications Authority of SA's (ICASA's) policy with spectrum in the 2.6GHz and 3.5GHz ranges will be “use it or lose it”, it says.
On Friday, the regulator published its decision on how it will allocate the contested spectrum. ICASA chairman Paris Mashile says, since the spectrum is a scarce resource, companies must make sure they use it both effectively and efficiently.
“You can swat a fly effectively with a hammer, but you will break the wall. To be efficient and effective, you need a fly-swatter.” Mashile adds that no company, including government-owned Sentech, will be excluded from the policy.
The new decision document has been a long time coming and many companies have been chomping at the bit to gain access to the spectrum. The 2.6GHz and 3.5GHz ranges have become referred to as WiMax spectrum; however, other and newer broadband technologies can be used in the bands, including LTE and HSPA.
According to Mashile, discussions over the last set of draft regulations on the spectrum had overwhelming support that iBurst should be automatically allocated the 30MHz of the 2.6GHz range, with an additional 10MHz that would have been taken from Sentech.
However, Mashile says everyone will have a chance to access the spectrum and none will be taken from Sentech just yet.
Two-fifths of the 3.5GHz spectrum was allocated to Telkom, Sentech and Neotel, leaving the remainder for further allocation. Spectrum licences in the 2.6GHz band were allocated to Sentech and iBurst, leaving 126MHz available for others to snap up.
Sentech's access to a large chunk of the spectrum has been an industry bone of contention since 2006.
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