The potential waste of LTE spectrum

My concern is simple: The new companies which will get spectrum may focus on high profit clients (i.e. businesses) and will not roll out a significant LTE network. It is very expensive to roll out a cellular network in rural areas (or even residential areas), and there is often not a good business case for it.

Promises to ICASA are easy, but will the new players realistically be able to meet the 70% national target?
 
I think ICASA is waiting for 8ta to get into shape to be able to participate in LTE... gov is very sneaky you know!
 
rpm said:
My concern is simple: The new companies which will get spectrum may focus on high profit clients (i.e. businesses) and will not roll out a significant LTE network. It is very expensive to roll out a cellular network in rural areas (or even residential areas), and there is often not a good business case for it.

Promises to ICASA are easy, but will the new players realistically be able to meet the 70% national target?
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^
This.

Competition is good...but to cut out the players that have proved themselves in terms of ability and expertise of rolling out such networks is just plain frekking stupid!
 
I heard somewhere that Orange might be interested in coming to SA. Maybe they're one of the new entrants envisaged (through local company with significant ANC ownership)
 
If only Vodacom had kept its stake in iBurst this waiting would be unnecessary. AKC had planned for this but his move was linked to nepotism more than it being in the best interest of the business.

Unfortunately VC didn't see the delays in spectrum allocation coming even though the slow pace at which ICASA moves is apparent for all to see.

It follows that in the past the big telcos had an upper hand in receiving spectrum which meant that they didn't see ICASA's decision coming. IMO the big guys should take part of the blame for not being considered by ICASA this time around. They have kept data prices too high. ICASA is ordinarily thinking in terms of bringing competition into the market and possibly drive prices down.
 
Why cant one of the big provides just buy iburst and get spectrum quickly that way?
 
Maybe ICASA has actually been very astute - new players will be forced to do deals with incumbents to reach targets, but can come up with innovative offerings and reduce the incumbents' leverage. Also you all forget the wholesale supplier- that should allow everyone to get a piece of the pie and I honesty think that is the best news.

I just would have actually gone with more wholesale chunks to be honest, wtf are Sentech ever going to do with theirs anyhow?? That could have opened up some nice competition across the board and had some interesting combinations - what stops an operator with spectrum also buying from one or both wholesalers for example? Or an imcumbent teaming up with a new player to take on the guys using the wholesaler channels? Their could also have been some tech competition, one Hauwei or ZTE vs Ericsson or something like that with two wholesalers going for differentiation to retailers.

Anyone know if ICASA is aware of cognitive radio btw and the potential yield that might bring to the whole spectrum issue?

That was a nice spectrum breakdown, do you have one for the 900/1800/3500 bands as well?
 
Not a single band for existing operators (think auction) is a bit harsh, but my guess is that ICASA are reserving that for the digital dividend (800 MHz). Would solve most of our problems if unlicensed use for dynamic spectrum access devices was allowed.
 
rpm said:
My concern is simple: The new companies which will get spectrum may focus on high profit clients (i.e. businesses) and will not roll out a significant LTE network. It is very expensive to roll out a cellular network in rural areas (or even residential areas), and there is often not a good business case for it.

Promises to ICASA are easy, but will the new players realistically be able to meet the 70% national target?
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agreed, reminds me off Neotel...
 
iBurst (WBS) is indeed in a great position with both 1800MHz and 2600MHz spectrum which are both suitable for LTE use. They must be an acquisition target, and I also think Vodacom must not be too happy with the fact that they sold its stake in the company.

This is however a clear example how regulatory uncertainty can harm a company: The previous guidelines said that Vodacom could not apply for this spectrum because the owned a stake in a company which already have some of this spectrum. They sold their stake partly to get their own spectrum. ICASA has now changed the plan to exclude them anyway…not cool for Vodacom.
 
rpm said:
iBurst (WBS) is indeed in a great position with both 1800MHz and 2600MHz spectrum which are both suitable for LTE use. They must be an acquisition target, and I also think Vodacom must not be too happy with the fact that they sold its stake in the company.

This is however a clear example how regulatory uncertainty can harm a company: The previous guidelines said that Vodacom could not apply for this spectrum because the owned a stake in a company which already have some of this spectrum. They sold their stake partly to get their own spectrum. ICASA has now changed the plan to exclude them anyway…not cool for Vodacom.
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RPM, IMO VC made a decision to exit iBurst after AKC left the company. We are aware that some executives at VC were not happy with the acquisition. In addition, it was not only the stake VC had in iBurst or rather WBS that would have prevented the celco from bidding for spectrum at the time the auctioning process was in place a year ago. BEE ownership of 30% is another condition that would have disqualified VC from acquiring spectrum.
I think the sale of stake in iBurst simply coincided with the auctioning process. ICASA's conditions gave VC more ammunition to execute the plan that was already in process.
 
rpm said:
My concern is simple: The new companies which will get spectrum may focus on high profit clients (i.e. businesses) and will not roll out a significant LTE network. It is very expensive to roll out a cellular network in rural areas (or even residential areas), and there is often not a good business case for it.

Promises to ICASA are easy, but will the new players realistically be able to meet the 70% national target?
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Sure there isnt a chance of buddy-buddy government tender sort of behaviour here?
i.e. new company gets the spectrum to lease to current players? (mtn/voda)
The usual government slice of the pie mentatilty.
 
In my opinion there should be moratorium on assigning new spectrum. In such way all players existing and new will be forced to sign legally binding agreement to make their contracts comply with CPA.

Besides, the existing bands are not utilised optimally. By example, none of HSPA+ network use R7 MIMO, AFAIK.
 
Question to those who know enough about it:

Why can't they just scrap GSM and re-farm 900Mhz to LTE and then use VOIP clients with QoS for VOIP? Isn't GSM super old and inefficient use of scarce spectrum? Would be pretty simple to do, I mean you can just install Fring or such as it is on a basic Java phone. Maybe then they don't need to bother with the GSM chip components and battery life would be better too (with data on).

Just a thought. Would be a ballsy move by a player to go that route, but they only get 10 or 15Mhz - not sure if that is enough for decent LTE??
 
Bern said:
Question to those who know enough about it:

Why can't they just scrap GSM and re-farm 900Mhz to LTE and then use VOIP clients with QoS for VOIP? Isn't GSM super old and inefficient use of scarce spectrum? Would be pretty simple to do, I mean you can just install Fring or such as it is on a basic Java phone. Maybe then they don't need to bother with the GSM chip components and battery life would be better too (with data on).

Just a thought. Would be a ballsy move by a player to go that route, but they only get 10 or 15Mhz - not sure if that is enough for decent LTE??
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Main reason really is that there are still a lot of mobile phones which do not support HSPA. The majority of phones out there in Africa are still 'dumb phones'.

Second reason is that there was a large initial CAPEX paid for those base-stations, they also provide redundancy should the HSPA network go down. Why replace them when one can simply add LTE as a 3rd option.

Finally, 15 MHz is a bit tight for LTE. Since it's based on OFDMA, the more b/w you have, the more users you can support. With such a small band, you'll have to roll out a large number of base-stations to be able to support the same amount of users as CDMA (HSPA) anyways.
 
UnUnOctium said:
Main reason really is that there are still a lot of mobile phones which do not support HSPA. The majority of phones out there in Africa are still 'dumb phones'.

Second reason is that there was a large initial CAPEX paid for those base-stations, they also provide redundancy should the HSPA network go down. Why replace them when one can simply add LTE as a 3rd option.

Finally, 15 MHz is a bit tight for LTE. Since it's based on OFDMA, the more b/w you have, the more users you can support. With such a small band, you'll have to roll out a large number of base-stations to be able to support the same amount of users as CDMA (HSPA) anyways.
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I realise this is not really an option due to the sheer volume of GSM (only) users, backward compatibility, redundancy and so on, but from a more academic perspective would it be feasible? Say you had a complete greenfields scenario.

So on the cost issue for the equipment vs bandwidth - right now the issue is data only, but if you are using the 15Mhz for your voice revenue as well how does this affect things? If all the operators shared their 900 frequency and there was VOIP prioritisation, would that be more effective (that should get a nice 50Mhz odd block or so surely).

What I am getting at is using the GMS TDM system you only get a little bit of bandwidth which is used exclusively for voice - if you used a packet based system that has QoS for voice built in natively (LTE does as far as I know) surely we could get way better use out of that spectrum. That would mean the end of dropped calls due to networks being busy (but not slow data rates due to congestion).

Kind of like the phasing out of analogue GSM where it was used and refarming that spectrum. Cellular actually use VOIP systems as it is, just they run them of the GSM TDM system instead of the packet data connections. I suppose once VOIP over the existing dat networks gets more pervasive and celluar companies can't tie voice in to the current GSM model it will then become a popular idea.
 
Its because GSM is still evolving and voice is still the prime driver for GSM. You can use fewer or no resources on LTE/WCDMA on voice and reserve it all for Data, increasing data volumes and customer satisfaction, all with no cost to voice quality.

There is also VAMOS which will double/quadruple voice capacity as well as EDGE+ which will see EDGE speeds of 1mbps+

Now think that GSM has more coverage, less cost, and is already rolled out to about 90% population coverage and you can see why its still very much the revenue driver for most networks
 
SteveO said:
Its because GSM is still evolving and voice is still the prime driver for GSM. You can use fewer or no resources on LTE/WCDMA on voice and reserve it all for Data, increasing data volumes and customer satisfaction, all with no cost to voice quality.

There is also VAMOS which will double/quadruple voice capacity as well as EDGE+ which will see EDGE speeds of 1mbps+

Now think that GSM has more coverage, less cost, and is already rolled out to about 90% population coverage and you can see why its still very much the revenue driver for most networks
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99.6%, to be exact. At least for VC :)

Bt you're correct, building a non-GSM 900MHz greenfield environment would, in theory at least, be possible but how do you refarm heavily used spectrum WHILE it's in use? With over 25 million active users it's just not possible.

It's a bit like changing a car's pistons while the engine is running. :)
 
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Bern said:
I realise this is not really an option due to the sheer volume of GSM (only) users, backward compatibility, redundancy and so on, but from a more academic perspective would it be feasible? Say you had a complete greenfields scenario.

So on the cost issue for the equipment vs bandwidth - right now the issue is data only, but if you are using the 15Mhz for your voice revenue as well how does this affect things? If all the operators shared their 900 frequency and there was VOIP prioritisation, would that be more effective (that should get a nice 50Mhz odd block or so surely).

What I am getting at is using the GMS TDM system you only get a little bit of bandwidth which is used exclusively for voice - if you used a packet based system that has QoS for voice built in natively (LTE does as far as I know) surely we could get way better use out of that spectrum. That would mean the end of dropped calls due to networks being busy (but not slow data rates due to congestion).

Kind of like the phasing out of analogue GSM where it was used and refarming that spectrum. Cellular actually use VOIP systems as it is, just they run them of the GSM TDM system instead of the packet data connections. I suppose once VOIP over the existing dat networks gets more pervasive and celluar companies can't tie voice in to the current GSM model it will then become a popular idea.
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If there was no GSM or GSM devices to support, then sure, would be more efficient to use newer technologies. Only problem is that such a scenario never exists in real life.

I don't think GSM support/demand will disappear any time soon and as such, I think that refarming of GSM frequencies is out of the question for operators if they have already reduced them as much as possible.

LTE is (in terms of spectral efficiency) one of the best, it's also close to a theoretical limit (known as the Shannon limit), so future implementations won't be able to achieve a much greater bps/Hz mark. The only way forward from there is to either use more spectrum or use it more efficiently in time. Dynamic spectrum access systems are designed to do that. Hence my signature :)

In short, they really don't have a choice and need new spectrum for LTE.

P.S. The wholesale aspect might be a big bungle up as just one more way to get dodgy tenders from dodgy operators.
 
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