Spectrum battle looming
The Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (ICASA) recently published its draft regulations for the procedures and criteria for granting radio frequency spectrum licenses for competing applications.
According to the draft regulations four licensees will be allocated 30 MHz each in the 2.6 GHz band (2 500 – 2 690 MHz). The spectrum license will be technology neutral and in-band migration will be employed where needed.
ICASA included a few restrictions as to which companies can obtain licensed frequency, including:
- A company cannot be an affiliate or hold more than 5% in another applicant in the same band.
- A company cannot have already been granted a licence in the designated band.
- An applicant can not have less than 30% direct BEE ownership.
Vodacom disqualified from the start
These restrictions are not welcomed by Vodacom which is disqualified through both a lack of BEE ownership and the fact that it owns 24.9% of WBS/iBurst who already has 2.6 GHz spectrum. Vodacom’s Executive Director for Engineering and Technology, Andries Delport is not particularly happy with the criteria which ICASA put forward.
According to Delport the regulator is disqualifying the company in South Africa which has made the most of the spectrum which it currently owns while other operators like Sentech are not doing anything with their very generous spectrum allocation.
LTE versus WiMAX
Delport further pointed to a potential problem with the allocation of spectrum in the 2.6 GHz band which will be suitable for LTE usage.
Sentech and iBurst currently have 50 MHz and 15 MHz of WiMAX spectrum respectively. Sentech’s 50 MHz is ‘sitting’ between 2500 MHz and 2550 MHz while iBurst’s spectrum is located between 2550 MHz and 2565 MHz. This seems to leave an additional 125 MHz to be handed out for either WiMAX or LTE from 2565 MHz to 2690 MHz, but the requirements of LTE FDD may mean that Sentech’s spectrum must be moved.
Vodacom pointed out that the LTE-UMTS band VII stipulates that two sets of unpaired spectrum should be used for the service: from 2500 MHz – 2570 MHz and from 2620 MHz – 2690 MHz. The problem is quite clear: Sentech and iBurst are currently residing in the 2500 MHz – 2570 MHz band.
ICASA said clearly that it favours technology neutral licenses, but the regulator has to date not made it clear what will happen to Sentech and iBurst’ WiMAX spectrum at the bottom end of the 2.6 GHz spectrum band.
According to BMI-T Navigator’s Dr. Martyn Roetter the ICASA criteria explicitly rejects the globally harmonized ITU Option 1 that includes 140 MHz of paired spectrum and 50 MHz of unpaired spectrum. This harmonized option is suited to the deployment of the probably most popular and widespread next generation LTE systems in FDD operation, allowing room at the same time for TDD systems such as TDD WiMAX and TDD LTE.
There are many advantages to sticking to international standards, including the cost of equipment which is mass produced rather than custom designed for a certain operator which is not following world trends.
Delport said that Vodacom is very keen to apply for 2.6 GHz spectrum for the rollout of LTE, but that it can still use existing bands if it has no other choice. This will however mean more complexities in terms of network migration and planning and be a more disruptive process than building a new LTE network in the 2.6 GHz band.
Vodacom can also not rely on WBS’s current WiMAX spectrum for its LTE needs as the company is using this spectrum for its iBurst WiMAX network.
It is not surprising that Vodacom is looking to gain access to its own 2.6 GHz LTE spectrum, but to achieve that it will first have to convince ICASA to re-write its spectrum allocation regulations and remove two of the three main restrictions now governing which companies may apply for scarce spectrum.
Vodacom spectrum battle – comments and views
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