Stop squatting on South Africa’s spectrum

Listen in as digital entrepreneur and former FNB CEO Michael Jordan joins Peter Bruce on Podcasts From the Edge to make an impassioned plea for Icasa, the telecommunications regulator, to stand up to local cellphone giants and retrieve extra digital spectrum loaned out at the start of the Covid pandemic. Telkom and MTN have gone to court to stop Icasa taking back the emergency spectrum it lent them early last year. But this, warns Jordan, threatens a a major economic reform — a planned auction of spectrum to the private sector by the end of the first quarter of next year and, he says, a competitive auction process could see a host of new opportunities open up in the market.