BUSINESS MAVERICK: Round and round they go: Groundhog Day for Telecoms

State of the Nation Address, President Cyril Ramaphosa committed to reducing the cost of data in South Africa. At the time, he promised that the spectrum licensingHe repeated this in his February 2020 State of the National Address.

However, while the mobile operators have been itching to get their hands on more spectrum – which is essentially lying fallow – an interim finding from a study being conducted by World Wide Worx into the prospects for 4G and 5G in South Africa, suggests that spectrum pricing may well prove to be a barrier to the future.

While the ITA has not been released, a previous version was released in 2016, from which can be deduced that the likely floor price for bidding for auction will be set at R3-billion minimum. “The risk is that operators pay for expensive spectrum but cannot afford to build the infrastructure for the next five years,” he says. This is undesirable for obvious reasons.

The delay is curtailing growth and investment, and what frustrates network operators is that significant blocks of high-demand spectrum have not been issued by Icasa since 2005, when it allowed the use of the 2.1GHz band for the roll-out of 3G networks by Vodacom and MTN. Cell C was allocated spectrum in 2011.

High spectrum prices are linked to more expensive, slower mobile broadband services with worse coverage.

Nigeria Nigeria Latest News, Nigeria Nigeria Headlines

Similar News:You can also read news stories similar to this one that we have collected from other news sources.

Business Maverick: Fidelity Assets Under Management Reach Record $3.3 TrillionFidelity Investments’ assets under management reached a record of $3.3 trillion at the end of June, a 15% increase from the year prior, as a surge in stock trading and new accounts helped bring in money.
Source: dailymaverick - 🏆 3. / 84 Read more »

Business Maverick: Tiffany Will Soon Reveal Everywhere Your Diamond Has TraveledTiffany & Co. wants to ease customers’ concerns about human rights abuses in the diamond industry by providing them with an unprecedented amount of detail about the precious stones it sells.
Source: dailymaverick - 🏆 3. / 84 Read more »

Business Maverick: Dollar Pressure Endures; Storm Delays Hong Kong: Markets WrapThe dollar remained near a more than two-year low while Asian stocks traded Wednesday with diverging moves despite a record close for U.S. equities. The morning session for Hong Kong’s equity market was canceled due to a typhoon.
Source: dailymaverick - 🏆 3. / 84 Read more »

Business Maverick: South Africa Starts Talks With Potential Buyers of State AirlineSouth Africa’s government has started talks with private entities interested in buying into the country’s insolvent national carrier, which needs at least 10 billion rand ($583 million) to resume operations.
Source: dailymaverick - 🏆 3. / 84 Read more »

Business Maverick: Citi’s $900 Million ‘Clerical Error’ Is Worst Wall Street Bungle in a Long TimeEven for Citigroup Inc., it was big money. On Wednesday, loan operations staff at the New York bank wired $900 million, seemingly on behalf of Revlon Inc., to lenders of the troubled cosmetics giant controlled by billionaire Ron Perelman.
Source: dailymaverick - 🏆 3. / 84 Read more »