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National Gazette No. 42829, 08 November 2019, Vol 653, Page 116

20191108 - National Gazette No 42829 of 08-November-2019, Volume 653, page 116

Page	116 of 280
Gazette	National Gazettes, No 42829, from 08 November, 2019
Department	ICASA
Notice	Page No. 52 of 209, Notice No. 600, Electronic Communications Act (36/2005), as amended » Notice regarding the Final International Mobile Telecommunications (IMT) Roadmap 2019

116    No. 42829            GOVERNMENT GAZETTE, 8 NOVEMBER 2019

IMT and Long-Term Evolution (LTE)

The number of IMT frequency bands has increased significantly in the last several years with the
                   progress of the ITU’s IMT spectrum planning.

The potential IMT technologies are LTE, LTE-advanced and WiMAX, with a clear trend towards
                   LTE both from the point of view of the available ecosystem and the choices made by operators.

LTE - paired and unpaired spectrum (FDD and TDD)                22

FDD and TDD trends

In the past, the majority of bands were assigned to FDD, with limited TDD spectrum in between the
                   FDD assigned sub-bands or in higher ranges. Recently, the amount of spectrum assigned for TDD
                   has increased, however, on the whole, there is still a gap between TDD and FDD, and there is still
                   relatively little spectrum for TDD in lower frequency bands.

A key requirement for the future is for chipsets and terminals to support multi-band frequencies to
                   meet the requirements of global frequency distribution. At the same time, to achieve economies of
                   scale and global roaming, it will also be required for terminals to support multi-mode, especially
                   LTE FDD and TDD. The technologies for LTE TDD multi-mode, multi-band Smart phones and
                   multi-band LTE TDD dongles and CPEs are maturing and increasingly becoming commercially
                   available.

The majority of assigned spectrum is paired FDD leading to the establishment of a complete and
                   end-to-end industry chain involving widespread participation of global industries and highly matured
                   products including system equipment, chipsets, user devices and test instruments. Currently 288 FDD
                   networks are in commercial operation worldwide, (as compared with 36 TDD networks, although
                   both are steadily increasing).

However, LTE TDD is already a mainstream technology supported by a well-established and fast-
                   growing ecosystem. The number of operators deploying commercial LTE TDD systems, or engaged
                   in trials and studies, is steadily increasing. For example, China Mobile is building the world’s largest
                   LTE TDD network.

While a large amount of low and medium frequency spectrum (generally suitable for wide coverage)
                   has been allocated for FDD, the same cannot be said for TDD. There is a general trend for higher
                   downlink provision; therefore, the high downlink capacity densities which can be achieved by the
                   larger  downlink  bandwidth  available  via TDD bandwidth, favour schemes at higher frequencies

22 The majority of the information included in this section originates from GSA published documentation

Page 52 of 205

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