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HIGH DEMAND RADIO FREQUENCY SPECTRUM: WIRELESS OPEN ACCESS NETWORK RESERVATION WITHDRAWN
- 25 September 2026
- Communications & Digital Technologies
- SA Legal Academy
The Department of Communications & Digital Technologies has gazetted a notice withdrawing provisions in the July 2019 policy on high demand radio frequency spectrum in terms of which certain bands were reserved for the wireless open access network (WOAN). Immediately effective, a schedule to the notice amends the policy:
- to make that spectrum available for licensing by the Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (ICASA), and
- requiring ICASA to ‘perform strict regulatory oversight’ to ensure compliance with policy requirements regarding:
- electronic communications network and facilities leasing, and
- ‘the provision of wholesale capacity to other licensees’.
According to an accompanying explanatory note:
- with Cabinet approval, the amendments concerned were subjected to public consultation in 2022
- the consultation process was ‘never concluded’
- no amended policy was ever published
- the May 2024 Next Generation Radio Frequency Spectrum Policy for Economic Development ‘did not … address the WOAN or the spectrum reserved for it, leaving the status of that spectrum unresolved’
- there has been no ‘successful legal challenge seeking to compel implementation of the original WOAN reservation’
- ‘no WOAN has been licensed’
- ‘no network has been built’, and
- ‘the reserved spectrum remains substantially unassigned’.
Please click the links below for more information:
Published by SA Legal Academy Policy Watch
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