South Africa: Communications Committee Welcomes Engagement With Mobile Network Operators

17 June 2025
Parliament of South Africa (Cape Town)
press release

- The Portfolio Committee on Communications and Digital Technologies has welcomed the engagements with the country's mobile network operators (MNOs) on Friday, namely Vodacon, MTN, Cell C, Telkom and Rain.

Acting in line with Parliament's Oversight Model, the committee invited the MNOs to evaluate how they support national priorities and complies with South Africa's legislative, policy, and regulatory frameworks.

The committee has sharply raised issues relating to the cost of data and called for the MNO to consider measures to further reduce cost to communicate and prioritise rural connectivity.

The MNOs highlighted the urgent need for legislative and policy reform to make the environment conducive to conduct business, the need to regulate over-the-top (OTT) services and to consider alternative approaches to spectrum allocation.

Follow us on WhatsApp | LinkedIn for the latest headlines

The Chairperson of the committee, Ms Khusela Sangoni Diko, said that all the information received will come in handy when the committee meets to deliberate on the budget of the Department of Communications and Digital Technologies in the coming weeks.

Ms Diko said that the department's budget will outline plans for the next five years and one of the things that the committee will raise is its extreme dissatisfaction with the pace at which the department is moving regarding policy reform.

Ms Diko said that the committee has asked the department to provide a realistic and more palatable timetable for a project of reforming legislation, especially the Electronic Communications Act 36 of 2005, and policies. Failure to do so will demand the Committee to consider alternative measures to fasttrack much needed legislative reform.

To this end, Ms Diko added that the committee is also waiting in anticipation for the White Paper on Audio and Audio-Visual Content Services which is anticipated to address the glaring regulatory gap within the OTT space.

The committee has encouraged for the coordination of all the MNOs' corporate social investment projects (CSI) realising that they are contributing greatly to communities with the only issue being that they work in silos.

Further to this, the committee has called for more engagements on the issue of expiration of prepaid data.

"I think we may have to engage more on this topic especially because people buy this data and it cannot simply disappear on the basis of MNO determined timelines," said Ms Diko.

In the interest of national security and technology sovereignty the Committee has called on the MNO to consider the mobilisation of own resources to build the country's satellite for communication.

Read the original article on Parliament of South Africa.

Tagged:
Copyright © 2025 Parliament of South Africa. All rights reserved. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com). To contact the copyright holder directly for corrections — or for permission to republish or make other authorized use of this material, click here.

AllAfrica publishes around 600 reports a day from more than 90 news organizations and over 500 other institutions and individuals, representing a diversity of positions on every topic. We publish news and views ranging from vigorous opponents of governments to government publications and spokespersons. Publishers named above each report are responsible for their own content, which AllAfrica does not have the legal right to edit or correct.

Articles and commentaries that identify allAfrica.com as the publisher are produced or commissioned by AllAfrica. To address comments or complaints, please Contact us.