South Africa’s burgeoning mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) space is set to take centre stage as parliament discusses proposed amendments to the country’s most important piece of ICT sector legislation, the Electronic Communications Act (ECA).
An updated Electronic Communications Amendment Bill was approved by parliament earlier this week and is likely to be published for public comment by the department of communications & digital technologies soon. MVNOs are among the key areas for change proposed in the amendments.
“MVNOs are one of the most important aspects of this bill. Bear in mind that in 2019, when the Competition Commission made its recommendations, we really didn’t have an MVNO industry. There was only Virgin Mobile, and maybe one or two others. But in the past five years, the industry has taken off,” said Dominic Cull, founder of telecoms regulation consultancy Ellipsis in an interview with TechCentral.
The amendment bill was originally drafted in 2022 following recommendations from the Competition Commission’s data services market inquiry report of 2019. In that report, the commission argued that there is an inherent conflict of interest between mobile network operators (MNOs) and the MVNOs they host on their networks.
A consequence of this is that MNOs are slow to adopt MVNOs, with the balance of power being skewed towards the network operators. A legislative approach would be the only way to ensure MVNOs have a chance at survival, according to the commission.
MVNO boom
The commission’s observations played out, with many of South Africa’s early MVNOs, including the first market entrant, Virgin Mobile, going bust. The market shifted following the 2022 spectrum auction, in which communications regulator Icasa placed MVNO hosting obligations on MNOs that acquired spectrum. The move led to a subsequent MVNO boom, with nearly 30 MVNOs now hosted across three of South Africa’s mobile operators, namely Cell C (the biggest), MTN and Vodacom (the smallest). Telkom Mobile and Rain remain the only ones that don’t host MVNOs.
According to Cull, the amendment bill seeks to, among other things, manage the relationship between MNOs and MVNOs to ensure there are no discriminatory practices and that pricing is fair. Another important consideration is the provision of the legislative framework required to allow a wider range of MVNO types to enter the local market.
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“At the moment, everyone is positioned as a reseller, and they are essentially buying voice and data at a wholesale discount and passing it on to the customer. But if you look at other jurisdictions, and Nigeria is particularly interesting, they have a five-layer MVNO framework all the way from a reseller to a full-fledged MVNO where you can have your own network elements, location register, phone numbers and so on,” said Cull.
Icasa published amendments to its numbering regulations in 2023 with the aim of regulating the recycling, quarantine and churn periods for mobile numbers in a standardised manner across the industry.
The regulations do not allow MVNOs to have their own phone numbers, meaning they rely on using a portion of those owned by the MNO hosting them.
When Lyca Mobile, one of the world’s largest MVNOs, exited the South African market in January 2024, it cited the lack of an enabling regulatory framework as one of its reasons for leaving. Lyca operates more like a full-fledged MVNO instead of a reseller in the more than 60 markets where it has operations. According to Cull, updated rules would allow players like Lyca and others to do better in the local market.
“There are markets where MVNOs are perceived to have made a real difference in terms of consumer choice and lowering the cost to communicate, and others where they have not been as successful,” said Cull.
“In South Africa, the rise of MVNOs is the single most important factor for reducing the cost to communicate for the majority of South Africans because we are heavily reliant on mobile data and we’ve only been able to get it from a concentrated number of players.”
Valde Ferradaz, CEO of MVNO enablement platform MVNX, said he looks forward to MVNOs being held to some of the requirements put on MNOs, including the application of data rollover rules and Sim card management. Ferradaz warned, however, that consumer protection rules gazetted by communications regulator Icasa in January, which force new data rollover regulations, could end up forcing up prices by eroding margin, especially for MVNOs.
Other focus areas
Other areas of focus expected to form part of the amendment bill include a new licensing category for infrastructure providers, including tower and data centre companies; Icasa’s powers to review markets for competition failures and powers to remedy an defects; and new provisions regarding spectrum sharing. Cull said the amendments are narrow in scope as they focus largely on the Competition Commission’s recommendations.
Nomvuyiso Batyi, CEO of telecoms industry lobby group the Association of Comms & Technology (ACT), said there is a need to overhaul the Electronic Communications Act in a more holistic way so that the legislation reflects the profound technological changes that have occurred since the act was first introduced in 2002.
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“The redrafting of the ECA should be treated as a decisive opportunity to modernise the country’s ICT regulatory architecture and align it more closely with the pace of technological change. The current framework is increasingly strained by rigid, prescriptive provisions that hard-code technical detail into primary legislation, risking obsolescence in a sector defined by rapid innovation and convergence,” Batyi told TechCentral on Wednesday. – © 2026 NewsCentral Media
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