The Independent Communications Authority Of South Africa (Icasa) has announced new regulations that will aim block\u00a0operators from charging out-of-bundle (OOB) tariffs without subscriber consent.<\/p>\n
In a presentation held on Thursday afternoon (25 April), the regulator said that the decision was made after\u00a0publishing its\u00a0draft End-User and Subscriber Service Charter regulations<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0for comment in 2017, and subsequent public consultations.<\/p>\n The new regulations mean that\u00a0operators may now no longer automatically start billing subscribers out-of-bundle tariffs when their data bundles are depleted.<\/p>\n Instead, they must present subscribers with the option to buy a new bundle, or agree to out-of-bundle billing – alongside\u00a0usage depletion notifications (SMSs) as customers consume their data bundles.<\/p>\n Icasa also proposed that users\u2019 mobile data must roll over if they do not deplete their bundles, and that\u00a0consumers can transfer data to other subscribers on the same network.<\/p>\n A number of mobile companies, including both MTN<\/a> <\/strong>and Vodacom<\/a><\/strong>, announced\u00a0 at the end of 2017 that they would slash their OOB prices in line with the new regulations.<\/p>\n
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