TechCentral asked South Africa’s largest mobile operator whether it can take immediate advantage of Icasa’s emergency temporary spectrum assignments and how it plans to use the allocations.

Against all expectations, your hosts Duncan McLeod and Regardt van der Berg are back for another lockdown episode of TalkCentral.

Government will consider a proposal for a once-off wealth tax during an economic recovery planning meeting on Monday, according to a report on Sunday.

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South Africa will gradually ease regulations in various sectors to restart activity after the national lockdown and will work on fast-tracking some structural reforms to help the economy recover.

One of the more surprising aspects of communications regulator Icasa’s emergency allocation of temporary spectrum to operators this week is that they’ve been given access to the digital dividend bands.

South African Airways plans to lay off its entire 4 700-strong workforce after failing to persuade the government to provide more financial help.

Communications regulator Icasa has assigned emergency temporary spectrum to telecommunications operators to deal with network demand during the Covid-19 crisis.

MTN South Africa said on Friday that it will be ready to use much of the additional spectrum allocated to it by communications regulator Icasa within the next four to six weeks.

Cell C is conspicuous by its absence from Icasa’s announcement on Friday of the companies that have been given access to temporary spectrum during the Covid-19 crisis. That is by design, it said.