South Africa’s communications regulator has spent the past week laying out how it intends to feed the country’s mobile networks for the next decade. In three separate publications between 24 and 29 July 2026, the Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (ICASA) issued a draft roadmap for mobile spectrum, an updated national frequency plan, and a public database that makes both searchable for the first time.
The centrepiece is the draft International Mobile Telecommunications (IMT) Roadmap 2026, published on 27 July. ICASA describes it as a long-term framework for planning, managing and assigning the spectrum needed for current and future generations of mobile broadband, explicitly including IMT-2030, the standards family the industry markets as 6G.
Reading the headline number carefully
ICASA’s stated ambition is to lift the spectrum available for broadband from about 850 MHz today to at least 18,588 MHz by 2030. Taken at face value that is a twenty-fold increase, and it deserves an immediate caveat: most of that volume comes from millimetre-wave bands, which are counted in thousands of megahertz each but travel only short distances and struggle to pass through walls.
The roadmap identifies mmWave ranges from the International Telecommunication Union’s 2024 Radio Regulations, including 24.25 to 27.5 GHz, 37.5 to 43.5 GHz, 45.5 to 47 GHz and 47.2 to 48.2 GHz. Useful spectrum, but for dense urban capacity and fixed wireless rather than coverage.
The more meaningful figure sits alongside it: ICASA says the proposed measures would raise the availability of high-demand spectrum by roughly 215%. High-demand spectrum is the sought-after lower and mid-band capacity that operators actually compete for, because it carries far enough to cover a suburb or a rural district. A 215% increase, there matters more to ordinary coverage than the twenty-fold headline does. Implementation is planned across the next five to ten years.
A frequency plan you can search
The roadmap follows the updated National Radio Frequency Plan 2026, published on 24 July, which sets out how each slice of the airwaves may be used. On 29 July, ICASA added the Electronic Frequency Information System (EFIS), an online platform that turns that plan into a navigable document, searchable by band, and downloadable with supporting International Telecommunication Union recommendations.
“The launch of EFIS demonstrates ICASA’s commitment to building a modern, digital, transparent and efficient spectrum management environment,” said Councillor Andrew Matseke, chairperson of the National Radio Frequency Plan Committee. The regulator says the system is aimed at operators, equipment manufacturers, researchers, academia, investors and the general public alike.
Why it matters
Spectrum is the raw material of mobile coverage, and South Africa has a long history of releasing it slowly. Publishing a decade-long roadmap, rather than running auctions band by band as pressure builds, gives operators something to plan capital against and gives equipment vendors a signal about which bands to build for.
It also comes as the continent’s mobile market is growing rapidly, with Sub-Saharan Africa forecast to be the world’s fastest-growing 5G market. Regulators elsewhere are moving on the same problem from the other end, as with Ghana’s decision to open 5G spectrum to competitive bidding after its single-wholesale-network model stalled.
The roadmap remains a draft, open to stakeholder comment within the period specified in the Government Gazette, and any actual assignment will still run through final spectrum assignment plans and formal invitations to apply under the Radio Frequency Spectrum Regulations of 2015. Publishing a plan is not the same as releasing spectrum, and on that distinction ICASA’s recent record on numbering reform suggests the process can take time.
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