Pretoria – The Independent Communications Authority of South Africa ("ICASA") published a media statement on 15 November 2018 confirming that the matter between Cell C, ICASA and MTN SA was settled and the effective date of the End-User and Subscriber Service Charter Amendment Regulations of 2018 is 28 February 2019 as ordered by the South Gauteng High Court.
ICASA has since received a number of concerns from some licensees in respect of the implementation of the regulations. One-on-one meetings were held with some licensees from 16 to 22 January 2019 to provide clarity on the issues raised.
After due consideration of additional submissions and inputs received from licensees, ICASA has decided to make slight amendments to the Regulations in order to bring certainty and to ensure that the enforcement and implementation of the Regulations does not result in unintended consequences for licensees and consumers.
“The slight amendments referred to were necessitated by the need to facilitate implementation and compliance with the regulations. The essence of the issues that the Authority intends to address with the regulations namely, usage notifications, rollover of data, transfer of data, and out of bundle billing remain. Further, the mobile network operators still have an obligation to educate their consumers on the new regulations,” says ICASA Councillor, Botlenyana Mokhele.
The following amendments were made and will be published in the government gazette:
- Usage notifications – licensees will be required to provide consumers with an option to opt-out of usage depletion notifications for voice, SMS and data services.
- Out-of-bundle billing - licensees will be required to provide consumers with an option to opt-in or opt-out of out-of-bundle data billing.
- Rollover of data – this provision remains unchanged.
- Transfer of data – replaced the word network with electronic communications licensee to avoid confusion.