Africa-Press – South-Africa. Icasa did not reveal the winning bidders of the Friday auction, only saying it had gradually passed the estimated R8 billion mark from the proceeds of the auction. The money generated from the auction will go to the national fiscus.
“Spectrum auctions of this nature can take weeks to clear,” the regulatory authority said in a statement released late on Friday, adding that the winning bids will be announced at the end of the auction stage. The next round is set to take place on Monday.
Rain and Telkom win first round of ‘historic’ spectrum auction
A total of six companies – Rain, Cell C, Vodacom, Liquid Technologies, MTN, and Telkom – are participating in the country’s first auction in over a decade, which Icasa had described as “historic”.
They are vying for radio frequency spectrum in the 700MHz, 800MHz, 2600MHz, and 3500MHz bands. Companies will use the additional spectrum frequencies to expand their network coverage and rollout new technologies such as 4G and 5G.
The government expects the benefits of spectrum allocation to lead to lower communication costs. Cabinet this week announced that it had approved an amendment of the policy on the licencing of the wholesale open-access network (WOAN), opening the amendment for public comment.
The proposed amendments take out the requirement for the licencing of the WOAN, which has been in limbo since Icasa last year announced that it had deferred its allocation, as it studied how the licensing process was conducted in other countries.
The licencing of the WOAN was initially expected to take place alongside the spectrum auction.
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