TELECOMS: All quiet on the 4IR front
You may have expected more emphasis this year on SA’s fourth industrial revolution. You’d have been wrong
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 economi...
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