Category: Spectrum
African Telecommunications Infrastructure in 2023
Welcome to the 10th annual review of telecommunications infrastructure development in Africa. Ten years is a bit of a milestone and perhaps a period worthy of some reflection, so for each section I’ll take a look back to 2014 and see what has changed. I think if anything has characterised...
Saving TVWS
How do technologies die? There is no announcement of their demise. Like Homer Simpson, they simply fade back into the bushes. Acronyms like ISDN and WiMAX used to dominate telecoms news headlines but today you would never know they existed. Billions of dollars have been spent on technologies that never...
Africa Telecoms Infrastructure in 2020
Welcome to the 7th annual review of telecommunications infrastructure development in Africa. Thanks to COVID-19, 2020 has been a year that no one on the planet will forget. It is also a year in which we came face-to-face with the critical role that telecommunications plays in enabling our economies to...
Africa Telecoms Infrastructure in 2019
Welcome to the 6th annual review of telecommunications infrastructure development in Africa. This review combines my analysis of the last 12 months as well as links to over 270 articles covering a range of African telecom infrastructure development issues in 2019. Undersea Cables On the surface it would appear to...
Spectrum Auctions Are Killing Competition And Failing Rural Access
If you are reading this, you are already within a narrow cross-section of people whose eyes have not rolled up into their heads at seeing the term “spectrum auctions” in a headline. The rules of how wireless spectrum is made available to service providers are arcane and, at various times,...