Hope to cut high data costs
TELECOMMUNICATIONS and Postal Services Minister Siyabonga Cwele says final regulations aimed at reducing the high cost of data would be implemented by October.
Cwele was responding to a parliamentary question from the IFP’s Liezl van der Merwe, who wanted to know if the department has made any progress in the past 12 months to reduce the cost to communicate. She said the cost in South Africa was among the highest in the world.
Cwele said the Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (Icasa) was working on mechanisms to regulate the expiry of data bundles.
“Initial interventions will ensure provisions to ensure that all segments of data bundles do not automatically expire after 30 days but have a cascading scale as proposed in Icasa’s draft regulations.”
He also said the industry would be required to inform consumers as data gets depleted due to use.
Consumers will be allowed an option to choose whether to purchase more data bundles as opposed to the usual default on bundle rates.
“The final regulations will be in place by the end of October 2017,” Cwele said.
There had been complaints about the high data costs and that the prices were unjustifiable, especially to the poor.
This has prompted a push for the reduction of data costs with Icasa saying the looming market inquiry into data costs would force down prices.
Economic Development Minister Ebrahim Patel has set up an inquiry with the Competition Commission to investigate high data costs.
Cwele had told Parliament in his budget vote speech in May that the Competition Commission would conduct an inquiry. In his parliamentary response, Cwele said the inquiry into the data market was expected to start from September 18 until August 2018.
“The intervention of the commission will include a clear understanding of the data services value chain.”
There will also be an assessment “to identify areas of market power where consumers may be exploited and to identify any structural, behavioural and regulatory factors that may influence pricing”.
Cwele said this would help benchmark data pricing against those of other countries. He also said there was no budget allocation that has been transferred to Icasa to address the high cost of data.
This was after the DA’s Cameron Mackenzie asked him about budget allocations for the expenditure to be incurred by the regulatory body to conduct enquiries to address the high cost of communication.
“No budget allocations from the department’s estimates of expenditure have been or will be transferred to Icasa which has budgeted for this area of work as reflected in its annual performance plan,” Cwele said.