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ELECTRONIC COMMUNICATIONS: LONG-AWAITED AMENDMENT BILL HEADS TO PARLIAMENT
- 20 April 2026
- Communications & Digital Technologies
- SA Legal Academy
In anticipation of tabling the latest Electronic Communications Amendment Bill in Parliament, the Department of Communications & Digital Technologies has gazetted a procedurally required explanatory summary of the Bill’s provisions. Released in draft form in June 2023 for public comment, the proposed new piece of legislation seeks to:
- enable the Minister responsible for local government to make a national standard by-law on rapid deployment
- introduce ‘the use it or share it principle for spectrum’
- ‘regulate roaming and mobile virtual network operator services’
- ‘improve the facilities leasing framework’, and
- ‘provide for wholesale pricing rules and standards’.
According to a media statement on the two Cabinet meetings at which the Bill was considered and approved, once operationalised the amendments envisaged are expected to:
- ‘create an enabling environment for investment, with a key focus on reducing regulatory barriers to entry to improve competition
- ‘drive down prices’, and
- ‘allow the Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (sufficient) flexibility to regulate the sector’.
As SA Legal Academy reported in August 2023, the purpose of draft Bill in circulation at the time was to:
- respond to recommendations in the Competition Commission’s 2019 data services market inquiry report, and
- give practical effect to the 2016 ICT White Paper.
An iteration tabled in Parliament in 2018 was withdrawn the following year. This after public hearings in which so many concerns were raised that more consultations with industry role players were deemed necessary.
Published by SA Legal Academy Policy Watch
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