Kenya’s Daniel Obam to speak on Digital Dividend at Spectrum Management Conference

Daniel Onyango Obam, a Communications Radio Technology expert at the National Communications Secretariat is set to speak on ‘Designing the Digital Dividend’ at the Sub-Sahara Spectrum Management Conference set for mid this month in South Africa.

The Sub-Sahara Spectrum Management Conference will be held in Johannesburg, South Africa from February 18 – 19.

Obam will give his presentation during the session titled ‘Designing the Digital Dividend’, the fourth of seven sessions at the two-day conference.

The event website states: “The digital dividend offers arguably more opportunity for economic and social impact in Africa than in any other region. To achieve this, it is important that a harmonized and co-ordinated approach is adopted, and the 47 countries of sub-Saharan Africa took a big step towards this when last year they became the first region to agree to harmoniously allocate digital dividend spectrum to mobile services in both the 700Mhz and 800Mhz bands.”

It adds: “There are currently however a number of bandplan and timing decisions still outstanding, and the direction that some countries (such as Kenya and Rwanda) are considering in taking of launching wholesale LTE networks also opens up some interesting questions.”

The Digital Dividend session will seek to look at the best way forward to ensure that the long-term benefit of the digital dividend is realized to its full potential by debating various issues around the topic. These include: What band plan proposals have currently been put forward for the 700Mhz band and to what extent which option will offer the greatest benefit for consumers and mobile operators; Which options across the 700Mhz and 800Mhz bands would offer the most benefits in terms of inter and intra-regional harmonization, and provide long term economies of scale and What timing options have been put forward for the respective bands in order to achieve this. It will also seek answers on whether countries need to look at implementing wholesale networks in the digital dividend bands and how successful can this approach can be in both promoting competition and efficiently rolling out LTE networks in developing countries as well as the long-term approach to the 600Mhz band be in Africa.

The 2015 Sub-Sahara Spectrum Management Conference is part of the Global Spectrum Series. It will bring together high-level stakeholders and decision makers from throughout Sub-Saharan Africa and beyond to discuss topical issues relating to the management and co-ordination of spectrum policy across the region.