The hard working boys and girls over at Skyrove.com are making waves again. This time they plan to take on the industry gaints by participating in the first ever auction for national radio frequency in the 2,6GHz band.

The Skyrove business model is simple and allows anyone to set up a Wi-Fi hotspot and earn an income by sharing or selling Internet access to others. If Henk Kleynhans CEO of Skyrove uses the same model as Skyrove and applies it to the 2,6GHz band, it’s going to be huge. This would in theory allow the company to scale rapidly via third party clients who could then resell 4G wireless broadband in their local area under license from Skyrove. The scaling potential is huge and me thinks the larger mobile networks in South Africa are going to sit up straight or miss out.

Most of the smartphones these days have WiFi and this new 4G network linked into the Skyrove model could create a network of WiFi hotspots so large that you could move between networks almost seamlessly. Thats the theory and me thinks only time will tell how Henk’s model really works. It’s going to be very interesting to see how the larger players in the indusrty respond to this.

I really hope Henk and his team win the license. Just participating in this auction is going to cost Skyrove R70000 (non refundable). They will also need to put down a refundable deposit of R750000 just to be able to bid. This is no small auction and taking on the industry gaints is no small task. Henk and his team obviously have fringing balls of steel and financial backing to boot, because this auction is going to easily clock a few hundred million. Maybe we should be wishing the industry gaints luck, because the new kid on the block is going to kick your butt

That being said we wish the Skyrove team well with their bid, we are rooting for you!