Vodacom shares why South Africa is falling behind on broadband

A lack of readily available radio frequency spectrum is hobbling South Africa’s national broadband hopes, said Vodacom to Fin24.

In particular, the South African government has been behind in implementing its digital broadcast migration project – opening the pathways to faster frequencies like 4G.

“Government only started distributing a few thousand of its 5 million free digital TV set-top boxes for the poor late last year after missing several self-imposed deadlines since 2008.”

This has forced service providers like Vodacom and MTN to re-use their existing LTE spectrum, resulting in poorer service.

“Vodacom, in its results announcement, also hinted at the problems it has experienced in attempting to attain spectrum in different ways.”

In 2014, Vodacom embarked on a bid to buy Neotel for R7 billion – a deal that was initially planned to boost the mobile operator’s fixed-line capabilities and attain Neotel’s spectrum.

This deal has subsequently fallen through, leaving Vodacom to look elsewhere for possible improvements.