Rain and Telkom win spectrum in Opt-In Auction round

[Jan]

Rain and Telkom the first spectrum winners — blow R2.7 billion

Rain and Telkom were the first winners in South Africa’s radio frequency spectrum auction, and Cell C the first loser.

The Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (Icasa) kicked off its spectrum auction on Tuesday with the Opt-In stage.

 

[backstreetboy]

So the litigation tactic from Telkom worked?

 

[Bighit]

Why couldn't these guys just agree to not bidding more than R1000 on each item, fix the auction. Less money for the icasa peeps who sold something they paid nothing for.

 

[Kodi]

I'm for team Telkom!!

 

[kolaval]

don't forget the 60 cents

 

[bwana]

So basically MTN (Telkom) and Vodacom (Rain) won without bidding?

 

[tinykov]

So it would mean the going rate for sub 1-GHz spectrum would be R75 million per 1 MHz given Rain/Telkom each got 2 x 10MHz at R1.5 billion. Am i correct in my calculation? Not cheap.

 

[tinykov]

So basically MTN (Telkom) and Vodacom (Rain) won without bidding?

No, it can't work like that. you have to bid to get any portion of spectrum. Either they weren't participating in this round owing to auction rules.

 

[PHeX]

Who really expect to see price drop on mobile services when these companies spend this much? Specifically VScum

 

[bwana]

No, it can't work like that. you have to bid to get any portion of spectrum. Either they weren't participating in this round owing to auction rules.

Rain already leases much of their existing spectrum to Vodacom and last I heard MTN wants to buy Telkom.

 

[r00igev@@r]

So Vodacom is going to lease the spectrum from rain for R10B. Clean R9B profit for 1 days work.

 

[DXL]

So it would mean the going rate for sub 1-GHz spectrum would be R75 million per 1 MHz given Rain/Telkom each got 2 x 10MHz at R1.5 billion. Am i correct in my calculation? Not cheap.

Considering the profits they will make once the tower is up. This is equivilant to 10% of total profit for a year. So its not cheap but good value for the operators.

 

[DXL]

Who really expect to see price drop on mobile services when these companies spend this much? Specifically VScum

Me ! As the CEOs of all mobile networks have said prices will be more affordable with 5G spectrum. Lets wait n see.

 

[Smiley_lauf]

Meh

 

[Swa]

This is still peanuts.

 

[j4ck455]

I just want to know why photos of a Malusi Gigaba wannabe keep popping up whenever ICASA is mentioned.

 

[Joseph matane]

Someone who understands please help how will this spectrum be used
Are we going to see rain using 700MHz band 10mhz for downloads then other 10mhz for upload?
Is rain going to have standalone 700MHz LTE band or it will be CA band, 700MHz plus 1800MHz
Anyway how many MHz do rain have in band 3
Can new 2600MHz spectrum be combined with existing 2600MHz to create one big 2600MHz without CA ?

 

[ashley3]

Someone who understands please help how will this spectrum be used
Are we going to see rain using 700MHz band 10mhz for downloads then other 10mhz for upload?
Is rain going to have standalone 700MHz LTE band or it will be CA band, 700MHz plus 1800MHz
Anyway how many MHz do rain have in band 3
Can new 2600MHz spectrum be combined with existing 2600MHz to create one big 2600MHz without CA ?

Great questions.

As a Rain user myself, I'd like to know where and how this new spectrum will be deployed.
We know Rain uses the 1800MHz and 2600MHz bands, but what are this 700MHz band for?

 

[tinykov]

I will attempt to answer, the 700 MHz band is FDD (Frequency Division Multiplexing) spectrum. So you need a pair of channels (2x10MHz) or even (2 x 5 MHz). In this case 10 MHz is used for downlink and 10 MHz for uplink. So equal download/uplink speeds which will assist a lot of people that are working from home which requires a good uplink speed for Zoom/Teams video-conferences. The 2600 MHz is TDD (Time Division Multiplexing) which means one spectrum channel for both downlink/uplink, so the radios takes turn sending and receiving. The operator configures the time slots in their own way thus allocating more slots for downlink path to give more bandwidth for downloads as internet users tend to require more download instead of upload. Most 4G and 5G equipment support carrier aggregation (CA), which means that spectrum that is not necessarily in one contiguous band/chunk (not adjacent) can be used to transmit to a user and aggregated by the user terminal.

 

[tinykov]

Great questions.

As a Rain user myself, I'd like to know where and how this new spectrum will be deployed.
We know Rain uses the 1800MHz and 2600MHz bands, but what are this 700MHz band for?

700 MHz will mostly be used for rural areas or at the edge of urban areas where you have few users far apart. This is because this signal travels further compared to 2600 MHz. The 2600 MHz band will mostly be deployed in densely populated Urban areas where you need more bandwidth in a smaller coverage area. But having said this, the license doesn't dictate to the operator how to use the spectrum (its a national license). It's all down to their network planning. The downside is the lower frequency (700 MHz) that reach far have lower bandwidth, while the higher frequency (2600/3600 MHz) have smaller coverage but offer higher bandwidth. Give and take