Icasa rules that unused mobile data must now roll over

Stephen Grootes speaks to Catherine Mushi, councillor at ICASA, and chairperson of the committee on End User Subscriber Charter about the new Icasa regulations on mobile data rollover and how they will affect consumers.

Listen to the interview in the audio player below.

South African mobile phone users are set to benefit from a major change that will stop unused data from simply disappearing.

From 2027, telecommunications companies will be required to let customers 'roll over' unused mobile data bundles instead of letting them expire. This follows new regulations published by the Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (Icasa).

Under the new rules, any unused data left at the end of a bundle’s validity period must be rolled over at least once. That rolled-over data must come with the same terms and conditions as the original bundle.

Importantly, customers won’t have to request this rollover, and they won’t be charged for it, as long as their phone number is still active.

Speaking to Stephen Grootes on The Money Show, Catherine Mushi, councillor at ICASA, and chairperson of the committee on End User Subscriber Charter says this is a big win for the consumer.

"We are also pushing hard for the consumer to be aware of their usage, that the complaint about data 'disappearing' also goes away, especially where we're entering into the smartphone era where apps are running in the background and the user is not aware."

- Catherine Mushi, councillor - ICASA

"We have taken it upon ourselves to listen to the consumer and also look at the practices. We do ask the operators to submit clients reports on a six monthly basis...there is a tariff report that we analyse just to see the trends."

- Catherine Mushi, councillor - ICASA

"We've got a duel mandate to protect consumers, but also promote competition, encourage investment and innovation. We also listen to our licensees, who said this is going to take a lot of our capital planning to redesign the network to accommodate the rules."

- Catherine Mushi, councillor - ICASA

Scroll to the top of the article to listen to the full interview.