The Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (Icasa) on Friday published the final International Mobile Telephony (IMT) Roadmap aimed at promoting investments, enabling a “vibrant and competitive” telecommunications industry and ensuring universal broadband access.
The roadmap, which built on the Frequency Migration Plan published in April 2013 and followed an extensive public consultation with relevant stakeholders in recent weeks, would see the deployment of various bands of radio frequency spectrum for IMT.
The deployment of lower frequencies that propagated a wider market, through the migration of a number of current licensees out of or within the bands identified for IMT services, was expected to deliver more universal mobile broadband coverage.
Icasa had also published a draft Radio Frequency Spectrum Assignment Plan for IMT to specify the technical conditions for the use of the frequency bands.
The regulator called on stakeholders to comment, within 14 days, on the rules for services operating in each frequency band.