Page 132 - SAMENA Trends - May-June 2023

REGULATORY & POLICY UPDATES SAMENA TRENDS

of service observed over the last eighteen months the ARCEP Management Committee on May 31, 2023,
of around 5% for Moov Africa Togo and 8% for Togo decided to give formal notice to both operators and
Cellulaire, the General Management of ARCEP opened granted them six months to make investments and
a sanction procedure on March 14, 2023 against Moov implement the necessary corrective actions to improve
Africa Togo and Togo Cellulaire," the regulator said in service quality or face "penalty of sanction."
a statement. After considering the investigation report, (June 2, 2023) www.connectingafrica.com

The Uganda Communication Commission (UCC) has for the 700MHz and 800MHz sales, and USD500,000 for
invited applications for its planned sale of 5G spectrum, the other bands. Applicants must present a clear five-
which it hopes to complete by mid-August. Spectrum year rollout plan and agree to cover 90% of the licensed
is being offered in the 700MHz, 800MHz, 2.3GHz, territory by the end of the fifth year. An average downlink
Uganda 2.6GHz, 3.3GHz, 3.5GHz, 5GHz and E-band (71GHz- data rate of 25Mbps must be achieved in greater
Kampala, with 15Mbps rates guaranteed in other
76GHz, 81GHz-86GHz) ranges. The sale is open to
both National Telecom Operator (NTO) licensees and regional centers. Uganda’s two main cellcos, MTN and
Regional Public Infrastructure Provider (RPIP) licensees. Airtel, have both said they are ready to offer commercial
NTO’s can apply for national or regional allocations. The 5G services as soon as spectrum is awarded.
application requires a bank guarantee of USD1 million (May 30, 2023) www.commsupdate.com

Ofcom has lowered the thresholds for when Operators to Ofcom. While they fell below the previous reporting
of Essential Services (OES) should inform the thresholds, we believe they could have had a significant
regulator of incidents, which should result in more impact on the continuity of essential services. As a
cases of significant disruption being reported. Our result, following public consultation, we have decided
United Network and Information Systems (NIS) Guidance to lower the incident reporting thresholds in our NIS
Guidance. Improved visibility of incidents impacting UK
sets out the incident reporting thresholds for which
Kingdom we consider an incident to be of significant impact, users being reported to Ofcom will enable us to better
and therefore when we expect OES to report incidents understand causes of disruption to essential services,
to us. Several outages have occurred recently in the identify significant cyber security and resilience gaps
Digital Infrastructure subsector that were not reported and spot thematic trends. (May 31, 2023) www.ofcom.org.uk

The FCC is considering spectrum sharing models in technologies to avoid harmful interference from one
500 MHz of the 42 GHz band. The agency wants to another. The NPRM proposes licensing the 42 GHz band
see how sharing models in this high band spectrum as five 100 MHz channels, and seeks comment on other
might best be used, especially among small wireless aspects of implementing a shared licensing approach.
United carriers. Whatever it learns can also inform future It seeks input on including coordination mechanisms,
first-in-time protections and buildout requirements.
sharing approaches. The spectrum between 42-42.5
States GHz is largely unused. The FCC says this so-called It also invites public comment on technical rules, and
“greenfield” spectrum is ideal to experiment with sharing potential synergies with the sharing approaches being
approaches because of the lack of incumbent licensees. considered for the Lower 37 GHz (37-37.6 GHz) band. It
Through a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) the proposes measures to protect radio astronomy services
Commissioners passed yesterday, the FCC will build a in the adjacent 42.5-43.5 GHz band.
record on the benefits and drawbacks of implementing (June 9, 2023) www.insidetowers.com
a shared licensing approach in this band. It will seek
comment on three specific shared licensing approaches: The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has
a nationwide non-exclusive licensing approach, in which released an updated version of its location-based
licensees coordinate specific deployment sites with a National Broadband Map, establishing that more than
third-party database; a site-based licensing approach, in 8.3 million US homes and businesses currently lack
which licensees would apply for each deployment site access to high speed broadband. The FCC announced:
directly with the FCC; and a technology-based sensing ‘On net, the improvements to the map since November
approach, in which operators would employ such helped to identify nearly 330,000 more unserved

132 MAY-JUNE 2023