Icasa to study frequency spectrum sharing

According to Icasa’s findings, which were released on Friday, the study would assist the establishment in ensuring that broadcasting and non-broadcasting services were able to co-exist effectively.

The decision to conduct a study followed hearings held in May, where broadcasters – the SABC, state-owned signal distributor Sentech and pay television channel M-Net – expressed their concerns about sharing the frequency, as there were fears that they would incur costs brought by the possible migration to other signals.

Broadcasters urged Icasa to conduct a study before allocating some of the spectrum to telecommunications operators.

The SABC said in its submission that the sharing would affect viewers in certain rural areas, who might lose access to SABC1 and SABC2. It also said more than 1 million potential SABC3 viewers who were served by high-power transmitter sites might also be negatively affected.

He said another option that Icasa could propose was for the broadcasters to move to an alternative channel.

Richard Hurst, a telecoms analyst at BMI-TechKnowledge, said channel 65 and 66, which are found in the same frequency spectrum, were attractive to telecoms operators because it would give access to the code division multiple access spectrum transmission technology, which gave clear signal for 3G and international gateway services.

The second national operator, which will start offering services later this year, and the underserviced area licencees have asked to be allocated the channel 65 spectrum.

Icasa had asked broadcasters to release 8MHz of bandwidth for telecoms purposes.

Broadcasters have occupied about 392MHz of bandwidth on channel 65. Icasa said the 8MHz would be enough for the short term until a move to digital transmission from analogue, which is expected to free up the spectrum.

Sentech, together with the SABC, will spend more than R1 billion for the digital migration process, which is expected to be finalised in the next four years.