If South Africa wants to take advantage of the benefits promised by the Internet of Things (IoT), all players (government, networks and business) need to work together and, more importantly, get their spectrum act together. This is the message conveyed by many of the speakers at the Southern African Telecommunications, Networks and Applications Conference (Satnac) in George last month.

Noel Kirkardy, head of Technology Middle East and Africa at Nokia Solutions and Networks, said for IoT to succeed, it’s essential that the bandwidth needed for these devices to communicate with each other is available. “The next generation of wireless broadband (5G) is fundamentally different from previous iterations in that it will connect people, locations and devices, not just provide a faster broadband link.”