SA telecoms law rewrite hits its public-comment deadline next Monday

South Africa’s proposed rewrite of key telecoms rules reaches an important deadline next Monday, 21 September, when written public submissions on the Electronic Communications Amendment Bill close at 16:00.

Parliament extended the original deadline by a month to give operators, civil-society groups, industry bodies and the public more time to respond. The Bill matters because it reaches into some of the sector’s most contested areas: spectrum use, infrastructure deployment, roaming, mobile virtual network operators, wholesale pricing and competition.

For consumers, those subjects sound technical but they shape how quickly networks can be built, how smaller providers gain access to infrastructure and whether unused spectrum can be put to work elsewhere.

What the Bill would change

The Electronic Communications Amendment Bill [B12–2026] was introduced in Parliament in April. One of its headline proposals is a “use it or share it” principle for spectrum. The intention is to create a mechanism for spectrum that is not being sufficiently used to be shared rather than remaining idle.

The Bill also seeks to regulate roaming and MVNO services, strengthen the framework for leasing electronic communications facilities and provide for wholesale pricing rules and standards. Those provisions could have consequences for the balance of power between large network operators and smaller service providers that depend on access to existing infrastructure.

Another proposal would allow the minister responsible for local government to make a national standard by-law for the rapid deployment of electronic communications networks and facilities. South Africa has spent years wrestling with inconsistent municipal processes for digging trenches, installing fibre and placing network equipment. A national standard could reduce some of that friction, although the practical effect will depend on the final wording and how municipalities implement it.

The Bill also proposes stronger competition regulation. That sits alongside a wider policy debate about how South Africa gets more infrastructure investment without allowing a small number of firms to control the bottlenecks that competitors need to reach customers.

Why the deadline matters

Public comment is not the final step. Once submissions close, Parliament’s Portfolio Committee on Communications and Digital Technologies can consider written input, hold oral hearings and amend the Bill before it moves through the National Assembly and later the National Council of Provinces.

The current text is therefore not settled law. For operators and technology companies, this is the point at which concerns about spectrum sharing, wholesale pricing or infrastructure access need to be placed formally on the record rather than raised after the rules have hardened.

The same applies to consumer and digital-rights groups. Rules designed to accelerate network deployment can improve coverage and competition, but they can also create disputes over property access, municipal authority, pricing and the obligations placed on licence holders.

Parliament says submissions can be sent to the committee secretary and should indicate whether the submitter wants to make an oral presentation. The extended deadline is 16:00 on Monday, 21 September.

The Wire Room will be watching what happens after that deadline: which provisions attract the strongest objections, whether the committee changes the spectrum-sharing and wholesale-access language, and how quickly the Bill progresses after public hearings. Until then, the important fact is simple: the current text remains open to challenge for one more week.