ELECTRONIC COMMUNICATIONS AMENDMENT BILL: PARLIAMENTARY PROCESS BEGINS

ELECTRONIC COMMUNICATIONS AMENDMENT BILL: PARLIAMENTARY PROCESS BEGINS

• 23 June 2026
• Parliament
• SA Legal Academy

In anticipation of a first round of parliamentary hearings, the National Assembly Committee on Communications & Digital Technologies has published a notice calling for written submissions on the Electronic Communications Amendment Bill. The deadline is 21 August 2026.

As SA Legal Academy has already reported, the Bill was tabled in April 2026 and – among other things – seeks to address ‘a number of the recommendations’ in the Competition Commission’s December 2019 data services market inquiry report. This is confirmed in a memorandum on the Bill’s objectives, which also refers to provisions:

• requiring the Minister responsible for local government to make ‘a national standard by-law on (the) rapid deployment of electronic communications networks and facilities’
• enabling the ‘use-it-or-share-it principle for spectrum’
• introducing the regulation of roaming and mobile virtual network operator services
• ‘improv(ing) the facilities leasing framework’
• introducing ‘wholesale pricing rules and standards’, and
• strengthening pro-competition regulatory measures.

Please click the links below for more information:

• Bill
• committee notice
• December 2019 data services market inquiry report
• SA Legal Academy April 2026 report

Published by SA Legal Academy Policy Watch

Follow us on X @SALegalAcademy (you can also join us on LinkedIn and Facebook)

If you use this information in articles, reports and social media posts of your own, please acknowledge SA Legal Academy Policy Watch as your source

0 COMMENTS

LEAVE A COMMENT