TV white space broadband is valuable spectrum that the government must license properly through the normal licensing processes, says an official from Ericsson.

Speaking on the sidelines at the AfricaCom conference taking place in Cape Town, South Africa Ericsson's Shiletsi Makhofane said TV white spaces needs to be managed... it cannot be a free-for-all.

White spaces technology taps unused portions of TV spectrum in frequency bands to provide wireless broadband services.

To date companies like tech giant Microsoft have gone to launch TV white spaces pilot projects in countries such as Botswana, Kenya, Namibia, South Africa and Tanzania to test broadband connectivity.

According to Makhofane TV white spaces broadband sits in the valuable section of below 1 GHz, which is vital and therefore it cannot be left for anyone to do whatever they want.

"How we manage the TV white spaces is very important because it needs to be aligned accordingly and go through the licensing process," he said.

Makhofane explained that if important spectrum is given away, the right processes set by the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) for spectrum allocation need to be followed to allow efficient use of TV white spaces broadband.

"We don't have a problem with the technology of TV white spaces, but we are saying is that let us not fragment the valuable spectrum we should use in the future based on the growth projects that we have," he said.

Policy makers must think about the long term implications, he added.

Ericsson expects that in sub-Saharan Africa there will be 20 times growth in mobile data by 2019.