{"id":11115,"date":"2010-01-14T22:10:00","date_gmt":"2010-01-14T20:10:00","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2010-01-14T22:10:00","modified_gmt":"2010-01-14T20:10:00","slug":"data-rollover-on-all-broadband-contracts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/broadband\/11115-data-rollover-on-all-broadband-contracts.html","title":{"rendered":"Data rollover on all broadband contracts?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (ICASA) has recently released its <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ellipsis.co.za\/draft-code-of-conduct-on-the-sale-lease-rental-or-subsidisation-of-subscriber-equipment\/\" target=\"_blank\">Draft Code of Conduct <\/a>on the Sale, Lease, Rental or Subsidisation of Subscriber Equipment, guidelines which are aimed at regulating the bundling of phones and other equipment with telecoms contracts.<\/p>\n<p>This document prescribes a code of conduct related to the sale, lease, rental or subsidization of subscriber equipment and minimum standards in that regard for end-user and subscriber service charters, and aims to protect consumers of these services.<\/p>\n<p>A variety of issues are handled in this draft code of conduct, including contractual issues, the freedom to purchase subscriber equipment, tariffs and offenses &amp; penalties.&nbsp; If a company is found to be in non-compliance with the code of conduct it can impose a maximum fine of R250,000.<\/p>\n<p>One section which may be of particular interest to broadband users is a clause which relates to carryover of &lsquo;unused units&rsquo;.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>According to the document &ldquo;a licensee, its agent or reseller shall not be entitled to require the subscriber to forfeit any unused units, capacity or minutes, as the case may be, in respect of any period.&nbsp; A licensee, its agent or reseller shall give subscribers a credit for any unused units, capacity or minutes, as the case may be, upon termination of the contract.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p>Currently unused data which is purchased as part of a monthly broadband service typically expires at the end of every month, and in the case of MTN and Vodacom data bundles last no longer than 60 days.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>This code of conduct may well have a significant impact on the local telecoms and broadband market if it is implemented in its current form, especially if data and call minutes never expire and must roll over indefinitely.&nbsp; The exact interpretation of this part of the code is however still unclear.<\/p>\n<p>According to one legal expert one will need to &ldquo;carefully consider the difference between a service for a set amount of data and a service which imposes a maximum usage cap&rdquo; when trying to see whether this section applies to a data service.<\/p>\n<p>He added that while such a clause is welcome and will ensure that consumers get what they pay for, it is a clear case where the interests of service providers and consumers don&rsquo;t overlap.&nbsp; He further expects that this clause will be strongly opposed by service providers.<\/p>\n<p>This Draft Code of Conduct is open for comment until 27 January.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/vb\/showthread.php?t=211750\"><strong>Should data bundles expire?<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>ICASA released a draft code of conduct which can significantly change the way broadband and other telecoms services are sold<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11115","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-broadband"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11115"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11115"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11115\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11115"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11115"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11115"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}