Government and ICASA commended for temporary spectrum

25 November 2020 News

MTN has recognised the Department of Communication and Digital Technologies (DCDT), as well as the industry regulator ICASA, for the important actions these two bodies have taken to advance the release of South Africa’s much-needed spectrum.

“While work on the spectrum auction was already underway when the pandemic hit, the DCDT and ICASA responded swiftly to release temporary spectrum, which had an immediate impact on our ability to reach more South Africans with even better coverage and quality,” says MTN SA CEO, Godfrey Motsa.

“MTN SA’s total data traffic has almost doubled from 2019 and by using the temporary spectrum, we have been able to significantly increase the number of South Africans using data through our partnership with government and public benefit organisations. We have zero-rated more than 1000 health and education websites which are currently serving more than four million people each month, and in the past year we dropped the effective price of data by more than 30%.”

MTN says it also used some of the temporary spectrum to showcase the speed and capabilities of 5G, not only in large cities but also in smaller towns such as Port Alfred, Hopetown, Virginia, Queenstown and Tsantsabane. MTN has also added new 5G clusters in Durban, Pretoria and Centurion.

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