Minister Matsepe-Casaburri courtesy kjd
Here in South Africa, Justice Norman Davis has denied Minister Ivy Matsepe-Casaburi’s request to appeal the Altech ruling. This once again opens the doors to competition in the telecoms sector in South Africa. The Minister can still appeal to the Supreme Court but let us hope that she takes good advice on whether to do so. The current situation has already gone from the sublime to the ridiculous. However, I put nothing past the Department of Communications. Telecoms in South Africa is the land of “never say never”.
The Minister could still attempt to have the Electronic Communications Act amended to suit her design but that seems less likely now for a couple of reasons. On the one hand, ICASA is now likely to continue converting VANS licenses to either individual Electronic Communications Network Service (ECNS) licenses (essentially a license to be a telco) or Electronic Communication Service (ECS) licenses. This is likely to mitigate against any attempt to move the state of play backwards. On the other hand, elections are looming in South Africa for the middle of 2009 and the appetite for passing legislation that is likely to be unpopular will hopefully be quite small.
So, with this issue out of the way, what remains? Well, frankly a lot. Market definitions, interconnection fees, essential facilitites, local loop unbundling, the list goes on. By far the most interesting one for me though is the issue of spectrum. The market is not going to really open up to competition unless we take some very proactive steps to open spectrum in South Africa. That for me is the next and most immediate challenge for industry, government, and civil society.
As I am getting my head around spectrum issues, I have found Michael Marcus’s blog, Spectrum Talk, tremendously useful. On the weekend he posted a link to a consultation that Ofcom (the UK communications regulator) have launched consultation on the possibility of of making license-exempt the bandwidth between 275GHz and 3000GH.
Excerpted from Ofcom doc - click on image to download full PDF
The rationale for declaring this range of bandwidth a “commons” is that the propagation characteristics of this range of bandwidth are such that any device would have fairly limited line-of-sight range. This range of bandwidth is prone to atmospheric loss and does not travel well through solid objects. Thus, the chances of interference among devices is minimised. Also, the large range of bandwidth that Ofcom are proposing to open up would also reduce the chances of interference.
The motivation for this proposal are two-fold. On the one hand, opening this range of spectrum to the commons reduces the regulatory management overhead for Ofcom. On the other hand, and for me more interestingly, Ofcom have explicitly recognised the potential for innovation in unlicensed spectrum. Specifically, they say:
“By removing regulatory overheads, the release of the spectrum in the 275-3000 GHz may encourage innovation and the emergence of new applications of value to citizens and consumers. Potential new applications for this band include short range anti-collision radar devices, detection of skin cancer and other non destructive evaluation methods used in industrial processes. However, given that it is unclear at this stage which applications will be successful and when this will happen, it is difficult to estimate the economic benefits to citizens and consumers.”
(text bolding added by me)
Recognising a spectrum commons as a source of innovation, in my opinion, is a very important step for any regulator. These are the kinds of discussions that need to start happening now in South Africa but equally in emerging markets in general. Spectrum is a complex area that demands as much technical as economic expertise to understand how it may be most effectively used.
Recent Comments