MACRA FM Spectrum re-framing to address broadcasting challenges

The Malawi Communications Regulatory Authority (MACRA) says the FM Spectrum Re-framing Project will provide a long lasting solution to the challenges that the broadcasting industry has been experiencing.

MACRA Director General, Daud Suleman made the remarks at the Bingu International Convention Centre (BICC) in Lilongwe on Monday during a press briefing on the progress the project has made since December, 2022.

Suleman cited frequency hoarding, where operators who have been allocated frequencies but do not use them despite paying for them and failure to pay for frequencies and depletion of frequencies in all the cities as some of the challenges the broadcasting industry is facing.

“The authority has been engaged in an exercise to re-frame FM frequencies so that we can open up space for more broadcasters to come in. So far, we have made tremendous progress and the taskforce that was instituted has done a lot for the past six months,” he said.

“Soon we will start releasing some of the recommendations so that existing operators in the FM space should take into mind so that we can begin to reclaim some of the frequencies,” he added.

Currently, the divide factor is at 400 MHz which the Authority wants to reduce to 200 MHz.

According to Suleman once that is done an area will be able to accommodate 100 new or existing broadcasters which, he said, will be a big improvement from the numbers that are currently operating.

Chairperson of the Taskforce for the Project, Haswell Solomon described the exercise as of great importance saying the broadcasting industry is struggling in terms of assignments when they want to transmit in other sites.

“In other sites we cannot find frequency. We feel that when the exercise is done with new assignments, we should be able to broadcast wherever we want,” he said.

MACRA embarked on the project to re-frame the FM frequency band (87.5-108 MHz) with the aim of finding a solution to the congestion in the FM band.