The Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (Icasa) plans to investigate whether the amended End-user and Subscriber Service Charter Regulations are being adhered to.
The authority is calling for public comments and submissions, within 30 days, on its intention to undertake a regulatory impact assessment (RIA) on the regulations that have been in force since February.
“The RIA process is necessitated by growing concerns from consumers that some of the requirements of the regulations . . . are not being properly implemented by licensees; and that there are not much changes since the coming into effect [of the regulations],” Icasa said in a statement on Wednesday.
General concerns have been raised by various stakeholders with regard to data expiry rules, high out-of-bundle (OOB) rates and rules and also OOB voice and SMS rules applied by operators, Icasa noted.
The authority also intends evaluating the impact – financial, nonfinancial and any benefits – of the amendment of the regulations on licensees and end-users.
Amendments to the charter regulations were first published in August 2017 to cement new minimum standards for the provision of data, SMSes and voice services, and data expiry and OOB services.
Publishing the notice of intention, Icasa reiterated that the regulations introduced four key pro-consumer interventions, including use notifications, optional OOB billing, the roll over of data and the transfer of data.
The authority published a questionnaire to obtain information from all interested stakeholders including licensees, consumers and consumer groups, civil society organisations and other community-based organisations.
The final RIA report will be published by March 31, 2020.