On the entire African continent, the fictional self-driving car in the '80s classic series Knight Rider would be able to function only in the mountain kingdom of Lesotho. That country is home to the continent's first commercial fifth-generation, or 5G, network, central to a future of driverless Ubers, and built by Vodacom. There is a new arms race afoot in the ICT sector with regards to the roll-out of 5G, vital to machine-to-machine communication, with British-owned Vodacom seemingly in the lead with its Lesotho network. Vodacom said it was able to launch a 5G network in Lesotho because that country's government was forthcoming with its spectrum. SA will hold a long-delayed auction of 4G mobile spectrum by April next year and is expected to offer 5G licences only a year later. The Independent Communications Authority of SA has not had a sale of spectrum in almost 15 years, though in developed economies this tends to happen annually. Access to new spectrum is not cheap, with the dev...
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