The Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (Icasa) on Thursday issued new regulations which seek to prohibit mobile network providers from charging out-of-bundle tariffs without the consent of their subscribers in a bid to regulate runaway data prices. 

This comes after Icasa last year published its draft End-User and Subscriber Service Charter regulations for comment that dealt with out-of-bundle billing before regulating data prices.

This was the consumer protection regulation that has been in consultation following the general concern around the perceived high cost of data as well as expiry of data bundles and out-of-bundle business rules applied by network service providers.

The movement #DataMustFall has gained momentum since 2016 after thousands of users complained about the high cost of data, quick depletion of their data, and some data that just vanished into thin air. 

The regulator conducted public hearings at the beginning of March this year where stakeholders expressed their opinions on the issues in the regulations.

According to the new regulations, mobile network service providers must send usage depletion notifications to customers when their usage is at 50%, 80% and 100% depleted so that they can avoid using their airtime.

Icasa's Councillor Botlenyana Mokhele said that providers are also required to provide an option to customers to rollover unused data in a bid to ensure that customers do not lose unused data as is the current practice.

Mokhele also said that all service providers are required to provide an option to customers to transfer data to other users on the same network, and that service providers will no longer be allowed to charge customers out-of-bundle rates for data without their specific prior consent when their data has run out.

The regulator said that the new regulations will come into effect after one month from publication and service providers are required to implement the regulations. 

The full regulations will be published on Monday next week on the Icasa website and then on the Government Gazette.