The Authority will conduct the qualification assessment in a phased approach as outlined below:
| (1) |
The Applicant must comply with section 5 (8) (b) of the Act, that is, the Applicant will be registered under the laws of the Republic and has or will have its principal place of business located within the Republic. |
| (2) |
The following documentary evidence must be provided by the entity in compliance to paragraph (a) above: |
| (i) |
A copy of the Company's registration certificate; and |
| (ii) |
the names and addresses of directors. |
| (3) |
The Applicant must demonstrate their ability to establish, operate and maintain the S-GLSD system, including stating whether the S-GLSD will be hosted locally or abroad (e.g. company website, documentary proof of involvement in the field of ICT); |
| (4) |
The Applicant must provide a Business plan, outlining the following: |
| (i) |
Fundamental assumptions for the business plan with financial forecasts for a minimum period of three years; |
| (ii) |
A market analysis of the services contemplated to be offered through the S-GLSD applied for, including forecast demand; |
| (iii) |
Description of products and services to be offered through the S-GLSD applied for; and |
| (iv) |
Description of pricing strategy for products and services to be offered |
| (5) |
The Applicant has less than 30% (thirty percent) equity ownership by Historically Disadvantaged Persons (HDP) or is below a level 4 contributor (B-BBEE status) in terms of the Codes of Good Practice published in terms of section 9(1) of the B-BBEE Act; |
| (6) |
The Applicant must indicate their approach in ensuring acceptable level of service availability (i.e. at least a 99.5% of uptime at the end of each calendar month) and reliability (i.e. a plan for a failover solution) including plan(s) for data backup, calculated as follows: |
| (i) |
The uptime service availability level shall be the total actual uptime minutes divided by total possible uptime minutes in the month, as calculated at the end of each calendar month x 100. So that (Actual Uptime/Total Uptime) x 100 = Uptime Service Availability percentage; and |
| (ii) |
Scheduled maintenance which has been notified to the Authority in advance shall not be counted as downtime, but any maintenance which has not been notified to the Authority in advance shall be counted as downtime. |
The Authority will repetitively perform simulated tests, remotely over the Internet Protocol, using the R-GLSD interfaces, to ascertain if components of the respective S-GLSD comply with the Regulations covering the following major aspects:
| 4.2.1 |
Implementation of the Communication Protocols, Interfaces and Storage |
Protocol to Access White-Space (PAWS) databases, RFC 7545:
| (1) |
The Authority shall furnish Applicants with a list of test scenarios and a document describing specific variations in the sections of the baseline PAWS RFC 7545 required to be implemented to comply with the regulation 10 of the Regulations. This protocol enables a bidirectional exchange of data between S-GLSDs and WSDs. The Applicants are expected to implement this communication protocol and satisfactorily demonstrate to the Authority the following: |
| (b) |
correctly acknowledging, or rejecting of the initialisation requests from WSDs; |
| (c) |
correctly allowing, or rejecting of the registration requests from WSDs; |
| (d) |
correctly providing, or denying of the provision of Operational Parameters (OPs) requests from WSDs; and |
| (e) |
acknowledging or rejecting of the notification’s requests with respect to the spectrum usage from WSDs. |
Communication Protocol between R-GLSD and S-GLSDs:
| (1) |
The Authority shall furnish candidate S-GLSD providers with a list of test scenarios and a document describing the structure of the Application Programming Interface (API) for the communication protocol that enables a bidirectional exchange of data between the R-GLSD and the SGLSDs. Candidate S-GLSD providers are expected to implement the PAWS communication protocol as stated in the regulations and satisfactorily demonstrate to the Authority the following: |
| (a) |
correct fetching of the protected incumbent datasets from the RGLSD in each interval or upon receiving a notification request thereof; |
| (b) |
correct fetching of the White Space Device (WSD) Type Approval datasets from the R-GLSD in each interval or upon receiving a notification request thereof; |
| (c) |
to correctly, provide TVWS availability information in each point/ or multiple points of interest upon receiving an instruction request from the R-GLSD; |
| (d) |
blocking the usage of specific TVWS channels in each area of interest upon receiving an instruction request from the R-GLSD; |
| (e) |
to provide the information about WSDs in their respective S-GLSDS upon receiving request from the R-GLSD; and |
| (f) |
to act and respond in a timely manner when instructed by the Authority to remove certain information from their S-GLSDs or to update the Algorithm. |
Storage:
| (2) |
The candidate S-GLSD service provider is expected to provide enough storage (minimum of 2 Terabytes) to maintain up-to-date technical information and all incumbent datasets in the 470 MHz to 694 MHz band to allow post calculation auditing by the Authority. Post calculation data must be stored by the candidate S-GLSD provider for a maximum of six (6) months after qualification period outlined in section (5) has elapsed. |
| 4.2.2 |
Implementation of the TVWS Algorithm and Calculation Engine |
| (3) |
The Authority shall furnish candidate S-GLSD providers with a list of test scenarios and a document describing the TVWS Algorithm and details of protected incumbents. The candidate S-GLSD providers are expected to implement the Algorithm in their calculation engines and satisfactorily demonstrate to the Authority the following: |
| (a) |
correctly and consistently, identification and protection of incumbent analogue and TV broadcasting services; |
| (b) |
correctly and consistently, identification and protection of the Radio Astronomy services; |
| (c) |
correctly and consistently, identification and protection of the polygons under the Karoo Central Astronomy Advantage Areas; |
| (d) |
correctly and consistently, identification and protection of areas along the bordering countries; and |
| (e) |
correctly and consistently, provisioning of TVWS availability results at any point/or multiple points of interests in the republic within the accuracy as determined by thresholds given by the Authority. |
| 4.2.3 |
Implementation of the S-GLSD security |
| (4) |
The Authority expects that candidate S-GLSD service providers will implement robust and secure end-to-end communication in their respective systems and be able to demonstrate the following to the satisfaction of the Authority:
|
| (a) |
a secure data exchange in the communication protocol between R-GLSD and S-GLSDs; |
| (b) |
a secure data exchange in the communication protocol between S-GLSDs and WSDs; and |
| (c) |
provisioning of OPs only to the Type Approved and authorised WSDs. |
Gas Regulator Levies Act, 2002
