Botswana: Towards the allocation of additional frequencies to operators
July 5th 2024
Botswana wants to award additional frequencies to telecom operators to improve services in the country. The Botswana Communications Regulatory Authority (BOCRA) last week launched a call for applications open until August 23. The frequencies are located in the 700 MHz, 2,300 MHz and 2,600 MHz bands.
The new spectrum resources that will be allocated to Botswanan telecom operators should notably enable them to improve the quality of their services, deploy new technologies such as 5G and accelerate the coverage of the national telecom network.
This is expected to adequately meet the growing demand for high-speed connectivity and consumer demands in a context of accelerated digital transformation. According to the latest BOCRA statistics, Botswana has 4.4 million telephone subscribers with a penetration rate of 168%. The number of mobile internet users is 2.7 million.
As a reminder, the Botswana telecoms market is shared between three operators. These are the historic operator BTCL, Orange and Mascom Wireless. The latter is the only one to have deployed 5G in the country.
Source: Agency EcoFin
Back