The communications authority of South Africa, the Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (ICASA), publishes amendments to end-user and subscriber service charter regulations to ensure that the enforcement and implementation of the regulations does not cause any unintended consequences for licensees and consumers.

The amendments are as follows:

• Regulation 3 changed, by substitution, to the following:
  • These Regulations are applicable to:
    • class and individual ECNS licensees
    • class and individual ECS licensees
  • These Regulations do not apply to mobile virtual network operators, resellers, and internet of things (or machine to machines).


• Regulation 8A is hereby amended by substitution of sub-regulation (1) to the following:
  • A licence must send usage depletion notifications via SMS, push notification or any other applicable means when usage reaches 50%, 80%, and 100% depletion of voice and/or SMS bundles
  • End-users must be provided with an option to opt-out of voice and SMS usage notifications.


• Regulation 8B is hereby amended by substitution for paragraph (a) and (c), sub-regulations (1) to the following:
  • (a) sent data usage depletion notifications via SMS, push notification or any other applicable means when usage reaches 50%, 80% and 100% depletion of data bundles. End-users must be provided with an option to opt-out of data usage notifications.
  • (c) provided with an option via SMS, push notification, USSD or any other applicable means to opt-in or opt-out of out-of-bundle data usage.
• Regulation 8B(1)(d) of the Regulations is repealed.
• Regulation 8B(2) of the Regulations is amended by substitution to the following:
  • Where an end-user does not opt-in to out-of-bundle data charge as per regulation 8B(1)(c) above, a Licensee must not permit any out-of-bundle data usage by an end-user until such time that an end-user purchases new data bundles or opt-in to out-of-bundle usage. In the event that an end-user does not make an election, whether to opt-in or opt-out of out of bundle usage, the Licensee may either immediately terminate data services or continue to provide data services, provided that the provision of the service shall be on the same terms and conditions applicable under in-bundle usage.
• Regulation 8B sub-regulation (4) of the Regulations is hereby amended to the following:
  • A Licensee must provide an end-user with an option to transfer data to other end-users utilising services of the same Electronic Communications Service licensee.

These regulatory updates are effective starting on March 1, 2019.