ELECTRONIC COMMUNICATIONS: INDIVIDUAL NETWORK SERVICE LICENSING INQUIRY

ELECTRONIC COMMUNICATIONS: INDIVIDUAL NETWORK SERVICE LICENSING INQUIRY

• 21 May 2025
• Communications & Digital Technologies
• SA Legal Academy

Please note: The report below is incorrect. The notice concerned may have been replaced by one calling for public comments on a proposed draft directive, although we have no way of ascertaining this. Apparently following consultations on the proposals concerned, a final directive was eventually issued on 22 August 2025. We apologise for any inconvenience caused by this misunderstanding.

The Department of Communications & Digital Technologies has gazetted a notice directing the Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (ICASA) to undertake an inquiry into the contribution made by new individual electronic communications network services licensees to improved competition and universal access.

The move appears to have been informed somewhat belatedly by a December 2019 report on the Competition Commission’s data services market inquiry, which among other things blamed ever-increasing data prices and relatively low domestic internet access on ‘inadequate or non-existent competition’ and the ensuing market power of dominant firms.

In terms of sub-section 5(6) of the 2005 Electronic Communications Act, in the absence of a ministerial policy directive ICASA may neither invite/accept nor consider individual electronic communications network service licence applications.

• policy directive (this document may have been surreptitiously replaced with a draft directive on which public comment was being sought at the time)
• Competition Commission inquiry report

Published by SA Legal Academy Policy Watch

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

0 COMMENTS

LEAVE A COMMENT