From an interview with EngineerIT: Self-regulation is the way to go

Can’t say I like that photo too much but it’s a good article.

I was a speaker at Wireless Broadband World Africa today at the CTICC. I presented on Industry Self-Regulation, WAPA and the OSA.

I had some good feedback and one delegate commented that he liked my idea that self regulation is like the Wiki approach to regulation. Inclusive, decentralised and demorcratised.. order without leaders.

I found Sadiq Malik’s ideas on a Telco 2.0 business model very interesting.

I was also a panellist for two of the discussion sessions. Paris Mashile’s (ICASA chair) was on one of these panels. He talked about ICASA’s challenges around funding and skills and how industry employs (steals) ICASA people. I suggested he should hire William Stucke (-;

There were a number of positive ideas around spectrum from Paris Mashile’s presentation:

• Efficient use of spectrum, sharing and re-use
• Use it or lose it policy
• A spectrum audit is in process and he agreed spectrum assignments should be public knowledge

He suggested that a large chunk of spectrum is assigned for military use and there would have to be a negotiation on freeing up some of that spectrum.

He confirmed that the process for licensing 2.6Ghz and 3.5Ghz spectrum will be formally announced towards the end of the month, but provided these details:

• This spectrum will be technology neutral.. not just for WiMAX use.
• ~120Mhz spectrum will be divided into 30Mhz portions (per license).
• There will be a 30% HDI requirement (not 51% BEE)
• There will be a “beauty contest” first round selection process, followed by an auction process.

This sounds very much like the initial process for getting Individual EC(N)S licenses. I’d guess at least 20 operators will make it past the beauty contest phase.. which makes the details of the auction very interesting. Will it be an open auction?, how many bidding iterations? etc.

This is going to be an interesting ride.

I was quoted in a MyBroadband article: Are you breaking the law with your Wi-Fi antenna?

Pretty good article.

“ICASA?
ICASA couldn’t regulate their way out of a paper bag if you gave them a pair of garden shears!”
– Garyvdh on the MyBB forum

I was quoted in an ITWeb article: Small telcos in limbo

Not the best article, imho.

I few comments..

As usual, I can’t remember saying the wireless access providers are generally in a state of limo.. they are still deploying networks using licence-exempt spectrum. In the context of their new licences.. I did say I think many of them are still in a state of awe and disbelief after actually getting their new (ECNS) licences. It was an interesting battle.

Most of the independent wireless operators which WAPA represents now have the same licences as Telkom and Neotel.. the only snag is that they don’t have access to licenced frequency spectrum and most of them don’t have the kind of money needed to build big fibre networks (yet).

I’d say this is a time of strategy and planning. They don’t have the option to “go for” shared or dedicated spectrum at this point, not yet. If anybody has created a state of limbo (around spectrum) it’s ICASA.

There will be a strong focus on spectrum in 2009 as licenced or lite-licenced spectrum would allow operators to deploy improved wireless networks under their new licences.. and would be a logical next step without the massive capital expenses related to building fibre networks.

The revenue numbers may very well be accurate.. but 60%+ of this income relates to consumer business income which has been under pressure from competing services like ADSL.