LTE spectrum plan in SA: advice from Qualcomm
In a recent interview with MyBroadband, senior vice-president of government affairs at Qualcomm, Bill Bold, gave his views on ICASA’s proposed model for licensing spectrum sought-after for rolling out high speed mobile broadband services such as LTE.
Qualcomm is a wireless technology and services company headquartered in San Diego in the United States best known for its work on chips used in many of today’s smartphones.
Bold manages Qualcomm’s public policy agenda and its relationships with government entities. He manages a global group covering consultants in the United States, Brazil, China, Belgium, India, France, Korea and South Africa.
Given the credentials of both Qualcomm and Bold, we asked him to give perspective on whether the spectrum assignment model proposed by the Independent Communication Authority of South Africa (ICASA) would work.
Towards the end of last year (December 2011), ICASA presented its plan for South Africa’s high demand 800MHz and 2.6GHz spectrum, which proposed a wholesale-centric model to address our spectrum needs.
Under this plan, ICASA would license two wholesalers with blocks of 800MHz and 2.6GHz bandwidth that aren’t allowed to operate at retail level, and three other operators in the 2.6GHz band.
One of the wholesalers will be state-owned signal distributor, Sentech, while the other will be a private company.
WBS (iBurst) is one of the operators with just 2.6GHz spectrum, and ICASA proposed licensing two brand new operators that will also receive only 2.6GHz bandwidth.
2.6GHz spectrum assignment plan: ICASA
800MHz spectrum assignment plan: ICASA
Asked whether this is a sensible model, Bold said that although he couldn’t comment on the details, they have seen “combinational licensing approaches” being used in spectrum auctions in several European countries.
“Qualcomm applauds both the Ministry of Communications and ICASA for initiating consultations on the licensing of additional spectrum for mobile broadband in South Africa,” Bold said. “Overall, enabling access to new spectrum allows licensees to address both coverage and capacity needs, and thus play a vital role in provision of mobile broadband in both urban and rural areas of the country.”
Bold said that they encourage government stakeholders to focus on topics such as:
- Criteria for eligibility as a licensee,
- Guidelines regarding sharing,
- Service agreements and quality of service to ensure mechanisms are in place to address any unforeseen effects such as market fragmentation and the technical and financial capability of new entrants.
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