TELECOMS: All quiet on the 4IR front

The long-delayed radio frequency spectrum auction, expected to take place in March, was conspicuously missing in finance minister Enoch Godongwana’s maiden budget speech.

Despite communication and technology being a key part of President Cyril Ramaphosa’s economic agenda, premised around the "Fourth Industrial Revolution", nothing was said about the auction, or the digital migration which has hampered part of the process — let alone plans to take SA into a meta new world.

In his state of the nation address, Ramaphosa said "innovation is held back by a scarcity of broadband spectrum. One of the greatest constraints on the technological development of our economy has been the unacceptable delay in the migration of broadcasting from analogue to digital."

The high cost of electronic communication in SA, a perennial sore point for business and consumers alike, has largely been blamed on a lack of competition and the "spectrum crunch". Fixing this issue was always part of Ramaphosa’s economic recovery plan, but its implementation has been continuously delayed. To put it into perspective, the last time SA released spectrum was in 2004/2005.

The Independent Communications Authority of SA (Icasa) has been redrafting its plan for the spectrum auction after an agreement with mobile operators, endorsed by the high court in September. This should, in theory, rake in about R8bn for the state, notwithstanding an ongoing legal battled with Telkom, which the government partly owns.

Earlier in the week, the regulator said Cell C, Rain, MTN, Liquid, Vodacom and Telkom had been granted formal permission to take part in the auction on March 8.

In its Estimates of National Expenditure, the National Treasury says the department of communications and digital technologies will, over the medium term, "mainly focus on implementing the broadcasting digital migration policy to release high-demand spectrum."

Digital migration, the process of moving from analogue to digital television, is also expected to be completed around the same time, led by minister Khumbudzo Ntshavheni. It has been yet another drawn-out affair, and its completion will free up some of the spectrum that mobile operators have been clamouring for.

With a total budget of R7.7bn, expenditure for the department is expected to decrease at an average annual rate of 13.3%, from R3.9bn in 2021/22 to R2.5bn in 2024/25, partly because of this year’s one-off allocation of R1.1bn for the broadcasting digital migration project.

For Icasa, additional funding of R300m for 2022/23 has been earmarked for "strengthening regulatory capacity and licensing spectrum".

While the government says it wants to use technology as an economic growth driver, private-sector players say more needs to be done.

"Technology adoption in SA is really at a level that we should be proud of," says Jonas Bogoshi, CEO of local technology giant BCX. "What is perhaps glaring is that the private sector seems to really be adopting these technologies but adoption in the public sector is lagging behind," he tells the FM.

The company recently published a report on the state of digital innovation in SA.

One area on which Bogoshi focuses is using universities to drive innovation that can be turned into viable commercial businesses. He highlights the example of America’s Cisco, now a company worth $238bn, which was born out of Stanford University.

In another part of the tech sector, ride-hailing players like Bolt are trying to lobby the government to dedicate more resources to protecting workers in the local gig economy, which now supports more than 100,000 drivers.

Andrew Ihsaan Gasnolar, Bolt’s head of public policy, says the company has about 40,000 drivers using its platform. "Yet they’re doing so in an environment that eagerly awaits the regulation that will remove the tension between them and other transport operators."

Bolt says it supports Ramaphosa’s calls to reduce red tape for small and micro businesses.

Gasnolar says there’s an opportunity for gig-economy drivers and couriers to be recognised by SA’s BEE laws.

Existing BEE codes do not make specific provision for such businesses to be recognised for work they do using platforms like Bolt or Uber.