800Mbps wireless Internet coming to South Africa
The Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (ICASA) gazetted final regulations for “innovation spectrum” on 22 May 2026, paving the way for 800Mbps wireless Internet.
The regulations opened the lower 6GHz band and the N77 band, a move Paul Colmer of the Wireless Access Providers Association (WAPA) described as “the best thing” ICASA had ever done.
The new regulations have made the lower 6GHz band, ranging from 5,925MHz to 6,425MHz, licence-exempt and accessible to wireless Internet service providers (WISPs), among other providers.
At the same time, ICASA opened part of the N77 band from 3,800MHz to 4,200MHz for licensing at a discounted rate.
MyBroadband asked Colmer what the new regulations meant for wireless access providers in South Africa.
“This is the best thing ICASA has done in its history and the greatest bit of news for anyone in the wireless industry,” he told MyBroadband.
Colmer explained that wireless providers relied heavily on the 5.8GHz spectrum band, with approximately 125MHz split among all WISPs.
As a result, the spectrum is heavily congested and plagued by high noise floors, which forced WISPs to invest in expensive radio-frequency shielding solutions.
“It’s been a long time coming. We’re about to open the lower 6GHz band, so that’s an additional 500MHz of spectrum,” Colmer said.
“The great news is that it’s nothing new. It’s a global phenomenon, the opening of this band. Because it’s a global thing, there’s a fully-supported ecosystem of equipment ready to go.”
Colmer said the move meant there would be no wait for equipment or anything else. He recalled that ICASA had been campaigning for the band’s opening since 2012.
“We are ready to go. I’m speaking to a lot of my WISPs about designing networks incorporating the lower 6GHz band,” Colmer said.
He added that the opening of a portion of the N77 band was slightly different, but that it could enable WISPs to offer capacity similar to fibre.
Combined, the opening of 500MHz in the lower 6GHz band and 400MHz in the 5G N77 band, wireless access providers have access to an additional 900MHz of spectrum.
Taking on South Africa’s fibre networks
Colmer explained the N77 band had been used as a standalone band for private 5G networks, and has immense potential for WISPs to provide dedicated high-speed connections.
Operations such as industrial plants, open-cast mines, and agriculture have relied on mesh systems operating on unlicensed spectrum within the band.
Colmer said that open-cast mining operations in particular used this kind of setup for the autonomous control of equipment and vehicles. However, this created challenges.
Colmer explained that noise floors had risen in the band, and with the workloads the mines carried out, latency was increasing.
“Unfortunately, because of safety systems, a lot of the autonomous equipment will shut down at high latency,” he added.
He said he participated in early trials with ICASA and the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research, successfully testing 5G connections within a 5km radius using a universal spectrum access switch.
Colmer said the results were encouraging and that it was “a very interesting spectrum band to be opened”.
He added that such a system had significant potential and could provide a high-speed, dedicated connection to the wireless industry while simultaneously offering lower-end services in the region.
“One 5G RAN radio will do the work of everything, delivering up to 20Mbps, 30Mbps, and 50Mbps to individual users,” Colmer said.
“Then, using network slicing, we could also run these dedicated links of 500Mbps or 700Mbps, with guaranteed latency, all on the same radio at the same time.”
He compared it to a shopping mall model, where a mall would not survive without large anchor tenants generating large revenues.
“You can get your anchor clients, your big business, industrial plants, and provide high-speed dedicated bandwidth with fixed latency,” Colmer said.
“The same radio can service the same standard fixed-wireless services for individual users.” He said a wireless provider in a multi-point operation could offer links with up to 800Mbps speed.
“We’re reaching the point where we’re getting to the same speed as fibre, with more reliability,” Colmer said.
By this, he meant fibre networks being disrupted when workers cut cables while digging for construction or repairing water infrastructure.
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