{"id":8986,"date":"2009-07-29T11:58:00","date_gmt":"2009-07-29T09:58:00","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2009-07-29T11:58:00","modified_gmt":"2009-07-29T09:58:00","slug":"vodacom-s-wimax-play","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wireless\/8986-vodacom-s-wimax-play.html","title":{"rendered":"Vodacom\u2019s WiMax play"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (ICASA) recently published draft regulations for the procedures and criteria for granting radio frequency spectrum licenses<\/a> for competing applications.<\/p>\n

In what can be seen as a significant move away from its initial plans to provide six new licensees with 20 MHz of spectrum each, ICASA now plans to license four new players with 30 MHz each in the 2.6 GHz band (2 500 – 2 690 MHz). <\/p>\n

ICASA Chairman Paris Mashile said that all applicants will be treated equally when applying for spectrum, which means that all the large players like Telkom, MTN and Neotel can make a play for the valuable 2.6 GHz spectrum.<\/p>\n

There are however a few restrictions, including that an applicant cannot have already been granted a licence in the designated band and a company cannot be an affiliate or hold more than 5% in another applicant in the same band. <\/p>\n

These restrictions will have a direct impact on Vodacom which currently owns 24.9% of WBS\/iBurst which already has 15 MHz of 2.6 GHz spectrum. <\/p>\n

It is widely speculated that one of the major reasons for Vodacom’s investment in iBurst was to get access to the company’s mobile WiMax spectrum, something which may ironically now mean that the cellular giant can not apply for its own WiMax spectrum.<\/p>\n

Vodacom has already rolled out a WiMax network on behalf of WBS\/iBurst, something which would have counted in its favour in any ‘WiMax beauty contest’ which is likely to form the basis of ICASA’s scarce spectrum allocation. The company’s deep pockets would have also helped in an auction scenario.<\/p>\n

Vodacom would not comment on whether it is planning to challenge the regulations, simply saying that it is engaging with the Regulator on its announcement to better understand its reasoning and its spectrum plan for the future.<\/p>\n

iBurst confident about getting more spectrum<\/strong><\/p>\n

WBS\/iBurst is more optimistic about the situation, and CEO Jannie van Zyl recently announced that the company has applied to ICASA to extend its WiMAX allocation to 30MHz of frequency spectrum<\/a> in the 2.6MHz and 3.5MHz ranges. Van Zyl is confident that WBS\/iBurst will obtain an additional 15 MHz of spectrum as it is a logical extension to the 15MHz already allocated and utilised by the company.<\/p>\n

“iBurst today owns and operates the largest commercial WiMax network in South Africa and is clearly committed to WiMax,” said Van Zyl.  The iBurst CEO highlights that it has a much smaller allocation of WiMax spectrum than Telkom, Sentech and Neotel, but that these companies have failed to properly use this scarce resource to the benefit of South African consumers.<\/p>\n

“iBurst clearly demonstrates the best ‘usage-per-MHz’ of WiMax spectrum, but the 15MHz allocation has seriously hampered the deployment of the network and has kept speeds low and costs high,” said Van Zyl.<\/p>\n

The ICASA Chairman said that while iBurst will not automatically qualify for 30 MHz of spectrum, it will be difficult to decline their application if they do indeed decide to ask for an additional 15 MHz.  Mashile said that their industry consultation indicated that 30 MHz of spectrum was needed for a strong business case, and denying WBS such a right is unlikely.<\/p>\n

Should iBurst receive 30 MHz of 2.6 GHz spectrum, it will only leave 110 Mhz of remaining spectrum, not enough to provide four new players with 30 MHz of spectrum each.  Mashile however says that a new entrant may feel comfortable with building a network using only 20 MHz of spectrum, which will mean that they can apply for such a license.<\/p>\n

Vodacom & iBurst WiMax<\/a><\/strong> – give your views<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Vodacom may be the only large operator which will be left without any WiMax spectrum<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sma_x_autopost_status":"idle","_sma_x_autopost_error":"","_sma_x_post_id":"","_sma_facebook_post_id":"","_sma_instagram_post_id":"","_sma_threads_post_id":"","_sma_x_attempts":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8986","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-wireless"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8986"}],"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\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8986"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8986\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8986"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8986"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8986"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}