Battle brewing over Wi-Fi licences in South Africa
South Africa does not require licensing or permits to protect spectrum for Wi-Fi services.
That is according to the Internet Service Providers Association (Ispa), in response to the Department of Communication and Digital Technologies’ recently-published draft next-generation spectrum policy.
The document published for public comment in September 2022 comes with a range of proposals on managing spectrum resources in South Africa in the coming years.
Among these is that telecoms regulator Icasa “continuously consider and review more protection of spectrum use for Wi-Fi services, including possible licencing and permits”.
The department said this would help facilitate the rapid growth of Wi-Fi in complementing and off-loading mobile data traffic to fixed broadband.
In South Africa, Wi-Fi spectrum is available in the 2.4GHz and 5.8GHz bands and is unlicensed, meaning it is open to customers and providers without getting permission or paying for it.
The Wireless Access Providers Association’s Paul Colmer previously described the proposal as a “massive step forward in all regards”.
Colmer said the existing regulations that determined who can use the spectrum and limits on their signal power output were insufficient.
Colmer said the higher-frequency 5.8GHz band used by wireless Internet service providers (Wisps) were extremely congested with a high level of interference.
“It is actually common sense that we have to manage these bands and also protect any incumbent users,” said Colmer.
Colmer said the protection could be achieved through automatic frequency coordination (AFC) — a database to allocate channels to avoid causing interference for existing users.
“These AFC databases already exist in the US, and multiple applications have been received by the Federal Communications Commission [the US regulator] to build more.”
Colmer said introducing licences or permits to access these systems for specific use cases would help improve compliance.
That does not mean that Colmer is calling for Wi-Fi licences for general home or business users, but rather Wi-Fi-based Internet providers with much larger networks that provide connectivity to entire neighbourhoods.
But his views were not shared by South Africa’s ISP association, which told MyBroadband the current regulation of Wi-Fi services was sufficient.
Ispa represents over 500 companies operating in South Africa, including many Internet service providers also counted among Wapa’s fold.
The association said current regulation was sufficient and that the success of Wi-Fi in providing local area network connectivity was premised on the spectrum it used being allocated as licence-exempt,
However, the association also noted the department’s wording was imprecise, and it had made a submission for more details in this regard.
Ispa strongly welcomed the draft policy’s focus on allocating more spectrum that can be used for Wi-Fi connectivity, an area where it agrees with Wapa.
Ispa interpreted this to mean that South Africa will look to make the entire 6GHz band available on a licence-exempt basis, with the appropriate power restrictions and other measures to prevent interference with licensed users.
Despite numerous routers and devices already supporting 6GHz Wi-Fi, none have been able to use this as Icasa has not made the spectrum available.
Mobile networks give their views
MyBroadband also asked South Africa’s major mobile networks for their perspective on the proposal to introduce Wi-Fi licences or permits.
MTN executive for corporate affairs, Jacqui O’Sullivan, said the operator believed current regulation of Wi-Fi in South Africa was sufficient.
“Globally and in South Africa, Wi-Fi is deployed in unlicensed bands. Devices that radiate in these unlicensed bands are subject to Icasa certification,” O’Sullivan stated.
Cell C said the issue was complex and would need wide stakeholder engagement for consensus between industry players and alignment with the government.
Vodacom and Telkom did not respond to MyBroadband’s queries by the time of publication.
Loading ...