{"id":17751,"date":"2011-01-16T20:39:00","date_gmt":"2011-01-16T18:39:00","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2011-01-16T20:39:00","modified_gmt":"2011-01-16T18:39:00","slug":"comprehensive-broadband-plan-by-icasa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/broadband\/17751-comprehensive-broadband-plan-by-icasa.html","title":{"rendered":"Comprehensive broadband plan by ICASA"},"content":{"rendered":"

At a press briefing, held on Friday 14 January 2011, regarding South Africa’s digital terrestrial television (DTT) standard<\/a>, ICASA revealed its intention to address South Africa’s broadband issues in a “holistic process.”<\/p>\n

Stephen Mncube<\/a>, chairperson of the Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (ICASA), revealed the regulator’s plan when offered an opportunity to address questions about the regulatory matters that need to be attended to before DVB-T2 could be adopted as the national DTT standard.<\/p>\n

Mncube said that ICASA is “already embarking on the frequency distribution process” and that they had enlisted the aid of an international expert to do a thorough study on broadband. <\/p>\n

At first his comments didn’t make sense in the context of digital TV, but Mncube and ICASA councillor William Currie<\/a> connected the dots in an interview after the briefing.<\/p>\n

One comprehensive broadband plan<\/strong><\/p>\n

Currie explained that the review of the current DTT regulations formed part of a greater broadband plan because of the spectrum that will become available when the current analogue broadcasts are switched off. This spectrum is also known as the “digital dividend.”<\/p>\n

Digital dividend spectrum is considered highly desirable for wireless broadband services as it sits in lower frequency bands. Lower frequencies mean a greater coverage area per base station, as well as better signal penetration into buidlings.<\/p>\n

Currie explained that the allocation of digital dividend spectrum will fall under ICASA’s new unified broadband process, which means the revised DTT regulations will also be linked to the process.<\/p>\n

It isn’t only digital dividend spectrum that is to be addressed, Currie added. The process is to address frequencies in the 2.6 GHz and 3.5 GHz bands<\/a> as well, in addition to other issues surrounding broadband in South Africa.<\/p>\n

The new broadband process, it seems, is meant to provide an overall strategy for broadband in South Africa which would influence other regulations.<\/p>\n

Looming deadlines<\/strong><\/p>\n

Previous promises made by ICASA have put some stringent deadlines on how quickly they’ll need to get through this new broadband process.<\/p>\n

The authority has promised to publish revised invitations to apply (ITAs) for spectrum in the 2.6 GHz and 3.5 GHz bands<\/a> within the current financial year.<\/p>\n

This suggests that their comprehensive broadband process will have to set at least basic spectrum guidelines in time to prepare and publish the ITAs by the end of March this year.<\/p>\n

Comprehensive broadband plan by ICASA<\/strong><\/a> << Comments and views<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

ICASA reveals its plan to address South Africa's broadband issues in a holistic way which will influence spectrum regulations and more<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17751","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-broadband"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17751"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17751"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17751\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17751"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17751"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17751"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}