HYDRA-headed challenges, including affordability and usability, have unconnected 61 per cent of people in Africa from mobile Internet services.This is seen as a huge threat to efforts to digitise economies in the region, including Nigeria, South Africa, Kenya, Egypt and others.

According to the Chief Regulatory Officer, GSMA, John Giusti, in an article, titled, ‘WRC-23: Mobile Spectrum for Africa’s Future’, 55 per cent of the global population is connected to the mobile Internet while 45 per cent is still left behind.

Giusti, ahead of the World Radiocommunication Conference this year (WRC-23) in Dubai, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), later in the year, categorised the unconnected into two categories – those who live in areas where there are no mobile networks (the coverage gap) and those who live within a mobile footprint but do not use mobile broadband (the usage gap).

He said the vast majority of the unconnected fall within the usage gap, which stands at 40 per cent of the global population and that it is much higher in Africa at 61 per cent. He stressed that some of the causes of the usage gap – affordability and usability – are problems WRC-23 can help.

Indeed, earlier this year, the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) said the number of Nigerians without access to telecommunications services fell by 37.04 per cent to 27 million. It noted that the number of identified clusters in the country without access to telephony services fell to 53.1 per cent as of the end of the year.

The Executive Vice Chairman of NCC, Prof. Umar Danbatta, said: “We have worked tirelessly to ensure we bring telecom services to people living in rural, unserved and underserved areas of this country, totaling 37 million people courtesy of the consultancy that was conducted in 2013.

Nonetheless, Giusti, said WRC-23, under the auspices of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), provides an opportunity to support that vision, (that mobile services can be delivered to all people and industries, leaving no one behind in the digital age) and make sure that the globe builds crucial development pillars to increase digital equality, widen harmonisation to produce economies of scale and provide a clear roadmap to address future spectrum capacity needs.

He said in the case of mobile, the WRC plays an important role in harmonising spectrum using, in ITU terminology, an IMT identification. This international agreement creates vast economies of scale and device diversity.

Giusti said for those mobile network operators (MNOs) with operations in Africa, WRC-23 is a pathway to better quality services, delivered to more people by the most affordable networks. MNOs need the new spectrum capacity that will be considered at WRC-23 to provide consistent speeds to more people as 5G services take off. He said the right amount of capacity allows minimising the number of base stations in the network, which does not just keep costs down but also saves carbon emissions.

According to him, the low-band spectrum discussed at WRC-23 (470-694 MHz) will support better quality services in rural areas and improve digital equality while leaving more than enough spectrum for existing services. He said the future of the mid-band spectrum is also on the agenda at WRC-23.

Meanwhile, by supporting 6GHz for IMT, the GSMA Chief Regulatory Officer, said African countries can ensure they can deliver fast mobile services beyond the end of this decade, saying this band is under development for mobile/IMT and will come online in the years after WRC-23.

According to him, it will provide crucial expansion opportunities as Africa looks to use 5G to leap over the barriers of laying fibre in the same way that it used 2G to avoid copper wires. Connecting Africa to fibre-like speeds through FWA can become a reality if this is powered by 6GHz IMT.

He said spectrum in the ranges 470-694 MHz, 3.5 GHz and 6GHz, with that vital IMT identification at WRC-23, can deliver the body’s vision for mobile in Africa and make fast, sustainable, and affordable networks available to more people.

To achieve this vision, Giusti urged Nigeria, South Africa, Kenya and other countries in the region to consider the following actions at WRC-23, adding a primary mobile allocation in the band 470-694 MHz, allowing those countries that wish to do so to identify the band, or parts of it, for IMT; identifying the band 3.3-3.8 GHz for IMT and identifying the 6 GHz band (6.425-7.125 GHz) for IMT.