The Independent Communications Authority of SA (ICASA) has finally released the list of used and available spectrum.
The regulator's move to quietly publish the master frequency list is likely to avoid a pending court battle to force it to reveal the assignments it has already made.
The Internet Service Providers' Association of SA (ISPA) has been battling to get a copy of the list since last year and finally decided to take the matter to the High Court.
The regulator has now published the list on its site, as it promised at the beginning of the week. ISPA regulatory advisor Dominic Cull has confirmed that a copy was also sent to the association.
It is unclear whether the document is what ISPA was looking for, but Cull says: “ISPA obviously welcomes any move from the authority to create conditions of greater transparency in the assignment of frequency and is busy studying the spreadsheet provided to assess the extent to which it meets the needs of ISPA members.”
The association's members have been battling to get their hands on spectrum to begin rolling out services to their customers on new networks.
ICASA has also been nagging the association's members to produce evidence that they have been actively rolling-out networks with their newly-converted licences. However, members have been hamstrung without access to the list of assigned spectrum.
Cull says that every spectrum application made by ISPA members is hit and miss because no one knows what bands have free spectrum. The association also wants to know what terms and conditions have been attached to licensed spectrum.
While ICASA's list seems comprehensive, there are no details about the licence terms, although there is information about how each band has been allocated in terms of technology. The regulator says it is working on implementing an advanced software application that will manage spectrum better, and will automatically update the now publicly available document.
ISPA's court application may still be on the cards, if the association is unhappy with the details provided in ICASA's Excel document.
The list can be downloaded here.
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