South Africa's ICASA: New Data Expiry Regulations Effective January

ICASA emphasises that the new rules aim to protect consumers as bill shock complaints continue. (Image source: iStock) The Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (ICASA) has defended its data transfer regulations , saying they aim to prevent bill shock and ensure fair data usage. ICASA yesterday briefed Parliament’s Portfolio Committee on Communications and Digital Technologies about the updated End-user and Subscriber Service Charter Regulations, which come into effect in January. The regulations, which govern data rollover, bundle depletion, and transfer of minutes and megabytes, are currently subject to legal deliberations after MTN and Vodacom approached the courts to fight them. The telcos reportedly want the rules to be reviewed, set aside and declared invalid, with ICASA cited as first respondent. ICASA councillor Dikeledi Cathrine Mushi told MPs that the authority has received legal papers from Vodacom and MTN, which indicated the intention to review the regulations. Mushi briefly stated the mobile network operators (MNOs) are concerned that where ICASA is “allowing unlimited transfer of data, [it] may be introducing a secondary market and therefore resulting in arbitrage”. Earlier this year, ICASA amended a decade-old set of regulations, to “curb consumer exploitation through practices such as high out-of-bundle rates and inadequate rollover provisions for bundles”, explained SA Legal Academy policy watch. Mobile operators have offered rollover since 2018 – but always on their terms. The January- gazetted amendment to the 2016 rules strip away those conditions. Operators can no longer require customers to buy new bundles to keep their data, limit which bundles qualify, or restrict how often unused units roll over. During the Parliamentary briefing, Mushi provided a snapshot of the current amendment on the transfer of data, out of out of charges, as well as the rollover of data at least once. The councillor stated that regulatory assessment follows market trends and consumer feedback rather than legislative requirements. “Upon seeing that data expiry continues to be of concern, we changed the default position, where opt-in was a default, and changed it to say consumers must opt-in to be charged additionally. This is so that it doesn’t occur automatically when data expires, or when you run out of data.” She explained that out-of-bundle rate charges are higher than normal bundle rates, often leading tobill shock for customers.“We were not happy with what continues to be complaints of bill shock.” On automatic bundle rollover, Mushi said the previous rule was that a user would request a bundle to roll over. Now, the rules set out there must be a bundle rollover of any unused bundles automatically, without the user having done anything, she noted. “When you hit your expiry date and you still have a 10GB data bundle, it must roll over at least once, so that you can still continue to use the value.” ICASA’s regulations also introduce sequential bundle usage, she noted. For example, if a user has bought two bundles, they would not necessarily know which one is going to expire first. “To help the consumer, we then introduced a rule that lets the bundle that expires first expire, so that at least you know you don’t have to keep tabs on which data bundle is going to expire. “We’ve also introduced the free transfer. Where in the past you would have to buy a bundle to initiate this action, we’re saying the consumer does not have to do anything but be able to transfer bundles to anyone on the same network,” she added. “The rule is that if your bundle would have expired on the 10th is transferred to someone on the eighth, it will be transferred with the same rules, terms and conditions. So, it will still expire to the person you’ve transferred it to on the same date. “If you lose your bundle because maybe there was a network fault, the licensed operator must then refund the unused bundle.” She added that ICASA consider