South Africa's Minister of Telecommunications and Postal Services believes the country should adopt an approach to spectrum allocation akin to Rwanda's shared spectrum model as his attempt to stop the Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (ICASA) from auctioning off high-speed broadband spectrum in 2017 enters a second day.

Minister Siyabonga Cwele says Rwanda's shared spectrum model demonstrates that sharing spectrum is a lot more efficient as it helps reduce the cost of infrastructure and maximises the potential benefits for a country's economy.

"We would like to give spectrum but in a more rational way. The key has been what is the best way and we have been studying some of these models including the open access spectrum. Rwanda, as much as people claim that it is a small country and you can't use it [as a blueprint] has proven that that system works well there. Government decided that they will allocate spectrum to one network and every player can have access to that network. They followed a different approach and if you check the penetration of ICT in Rwanda - as small as they are - it is better than most of the bigger countries."

Minister Cwele says adopting a shared spectrum model would also help to address concerns raised by several local smaller ICT players who say that the price and time period associated with allocating 700MHz, 800MHz and 2,600MHz bands, as gazetted by ICASA, caters to large and established companies.

"There is a perception I found when I was engaging the telcos that our reference to Telkom as a 'lead agency' means that we want to allocate all the spectrum to them. I said no, there is no such policy and we would actually like the industry players to collaborate and decide on their own - without interference from government, how they will manage this thins. As we move higher technologies we are not going to afford to have smaller chunks of spectrum and be effective. We were talking about spectrum for mobility so you are going to need to make sure that the networks are resilient and they have got capacity. That capacity spectrum must be available. There is no technological reason why they can't share. We do understand though that the current telcos were formed on competition on infrastructure. We are saying let's move to competition on service rather than on infrastructure."

The regulator should be willing to wait for the government to finalise its ICT Policy White Paper which is currently being perused by the South Africa's cabinet after three years of consultation with all industry players according to Minister Cwele.

He added that spectrum allocation should only take place once there is clear policy for the regulator to rely on.

"We hope that once we once we have finalised the policy and put the allocation plans then we can enable the licensing authorities like the regulator to do that in a rational manner where they have got clear guiding policies, not just for this year but for the long term because the policies we are putting here must stay with us until 2025 or even 2030 so that we can create certainty."

The Minister also emphasised that his department's decision to challenge ICASA in court is in the best interest of South Africa's telecommunications sector.

"We have got no intentions government to kill the industry, We want the industry to grow. We want the industry to invest and we want the industry to make profits, but we are appealing to them not to focus on super profits but instead to have reasonable profits so that we can reduce the cost to the citizen. What is important, most important, is not the governed, it is the citizen and what their experience will be at the end of the day as a consumer of the product."