Appeal for urgent telecoms probe
THE telecoms regulator had to review urgently how spectrum was divided up between network operators to make sure consumers can finally benefit from liberalisation of the sector.
Spectrum allocation is a crucial issue for the Independent Communications Authority of SA (Icasa) to resolve, after a high court ruling theoretically made SA one of the most competitive telecoms markets in the world, Mike Silber, regulatory adviser to the Internet Service Providers’ Association (Ispa) said this week.
A court granted permission for hundreds of voice and data carriers such as internet service providers to build their own networks. But those networks would need access to an interference-free spectrum to offer quality communications.
“Now we have all these companies with the ability to roll out networks, but we are only going to see a big change if we free up access to spectrum,” Silber said.
Icasa was checking which operators owned and used which frequencies, but had to back that up by a “use it or lose it” policy, he said.
Icasa chairman Paris Mashile had spoken of clawing back valuable spectrum that the state-owned signal carrier Sentech is not using. That would be welcome, Silber said.
Icasa had said 80% of SA’s available spectrum was already permanently allocated. “We don’t understand why any assignment of spectrum should be considered permanent,” Silber said.
Ispa believed shared spectrum allocation was the best approach for certain frequencies, where operators paid small fees for national, nonexclusive licences, and paid additional fees for each base station they erected.
Letting the companies share spectrum would ensure it was used efficiently and would help new players to establish themselves, Silber said. Another option was to hand out spectrum in the less popular frequencies, so companies could experiment with different equipment to use that bandwidth.
Icasa also had to make wireless licence fees as low as possible to reduce the barriers to entry for new competitors wanting to build their own networks, Ispa said.
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