Your Mobile Data Rights: Rollover, Transfer, and the Expiry Rule That Never Became Law

Mobile data is one of the larger recurring bills in a South African household, and the rules governing it are almost never explained to the people paying it.

Some of what you have been told is real and enforceable. Your network must let you roll unused data over. It must let you hand data to someone else on the same network. And it may not quietly drop you onto out-of-bundle rates when a bundle runs out.

One widely repeated thing is not real at all: there is no legal schedule for how long a data bundle must last. That schedule was drafted, argued over, and never enacted.

Here is what the regulations actually require — which matters, because internet cost is one of the few household expenses where knowing the rule changes the bill.

The out-of-bundle protection

This is the strongest provision, and it exists because bill shock was the original complaint.

You must be provided with an option — by SMS, push notification, USSD or any other applicable means — to opt in or opt out of out-of-bundle data usage.

And then the part that does the work: where you have not opted in, a licensee must not permit any out-of-bundle data usage until you either buy a new bundle or opt in to being charged those rates.

There is a third scenario, for people who never respond either way. Where you make no election at all, the licensee may either terminate the data service, or keep providing it — but if it keeps providing it, the service must be on the same terms and conditions that applied to in-bundle usage.

Read that again, because it is the sentence that protects your account. Silence does not mean consent to out-of-bundle rates. If your network chooses to keep you connected after your bundle runs out and you never opted in, it must charge you as though you were still in-bundle.

Depletion notifications at 50%, 80% and 100%

You must be sent usage depletion notifications — by SMS, push notification or any other applicable means — when your usage reaches 50%, 80% and 100% of a bundle.

That applies to data bundles, and separately to voice and SMS bundles.

You are entitled to opt out of those notifications if you find them irritating, but the default is that they are sent. If you are not receiving them and have not opted out, that is a compliance question worth raising.

You must also be able to buy additional data at any time, via USSD, push notification or another means — and post-paid users must be able to buy additional voice or SMS at any time too.

Rollover, and the order it is used in

A licensee must provide you with an option to roll over unused data before the expiry date.

The regulation then adds a detail that quietly protects you from a trick: where unused data has been rolled over, the licensee must apply your usage against the rolled-over data first, until that is fully depleted, and only thereafter against the newly allocated data.

Without that sentence, a network could burn your fresh bundle while the rolled-over data sat quietly reaching its own expiry. The order of consumption is prescribed precisely so that cannot happen.

Note the words "before expiry date". Rollover is a right to carry data forward while it is still alive. It is not a right to resurrect data that has already lapsed.

Transferring data — same network only

You must be given an option to transfer data to other end-users using the services of the same electronic communications service licensee.

The limit is in the wording. Same licensee — which in practice means the same network. There is no obligation to let you send data across networks, and an operator refusing a cross-network transfer is not breaching this regulation.

The expiry schedule that never became law

Now the correction, because this one circulates as settled fact.

You will find a schedule quoted that links bundle size to a minimum validity period — ten days at the bottom for very small bundles, running up to twenty-four months for the largest. It reads like law. It is not.

That schedule appears in the Authority's reasons document, in a passage describing what the first draft of the amendments proposed. The enacted regulations, published in the Government Gazette on 7 May 2018 and amended with effect from 1 March 2019, contain the notification rules, the out-of-bundle protection, rollover, transfer and consumer education — and no expiry periods at all.

The gap has since been left open twice. When the Authority amended these Regulations again in April 2023, it dealt only with quality of service parameters, and said expressly that the data bundle rules on expiry and transfer would be subject to a further round of consultation.

So the practical position is this: your bundle's validity period is a matter of contract with your network, not a statutory minimum. Which means it is worth checking before you buy, and worth comparing between operators, because nothing obliges them to agree with each other.

An exemption you were probably never told about

The Regulations state that they do not apply to mobile virtual network operators, resellers, or internet of things and machine-to-machine services.

A mobile virtual network operator is a brand that sells you a service running on somebody else's network. Several well-known South African offerings work that way, including some sold through retailers and banks. If your provider is an MVNO or a reseller rather than a licensee in its own right, the rules above do not bind it.

This is worth establishing before you complain, because it determines whether you have a regulatory argument or only a contractual one.

Why the rules took so long to arrive

A short history, because it explains the delay people noticed at the time and it tells you something about how hard-fought these provisions were.

The amendment regulations were published on 9 May 2018, to take effect on 8 June 2018. On 7 June — the day before — Cell C launched an urgent application seeking to interdict them. The Authority suspended the effective date that same day. MTN and Telkom joined in support.

The matter settled out of court on 16 November 2018, with the amendments to take effect at midnight on 28 February 2019. That is why the rules that were meant to arrive in mid-2018 only started operating in 2019.

What to do with all this

1. Check whether you are opted in to out-of-bundle charging. If you never opted in, you should not be paying out-of-bundle rates at all.
2. Check that you are receiving depletion notifications at 50%, 80% and 100% — unless you opted out of them.
3. Turn on rollover if your network offers it as a setting rather than a default, and remember that rolled-over data is consumed first.
4. Check your bundle's validity period before buying, since there is no statutory minimum and periods differ between operators and bundle sizes.
5. Establish who your provider actually is. A virtual operator or reseller is outside these Regulations.
6. Complain in writing to the licensee first. If it cannot resolve the complaint under its own process, the matter may be referred to the Authority's alternative dispute resolution.

If the underlying problem is that mobile data is doing a job that fixed-line broadband would do more cheaply, that is a different calculation — our fibre availability check and fibre speed calculator are the faster way to work out whether it is worth switching.

For everything else, start at our money guides.

Frequently asked questions

Does my data legally have to last a certain time in South Africa? No. The enacted regulations contain no expiry or validity periods. A schedule linking bundle size to a minimum validity was proposed in the first draft and never made law, and the Authority deferred the question again in 2023.

Can my network charge me out-of-bundle rates automatically? No. You must be given an option to opt in or opt out, and where you have not opted in, the licensee must not permit any out-of-bundle usage until you buy a new bundle or opt in.

What if I never respond either way? The licensee may either terminate the data service or keep providing it — but if it keeps providing it, the service must be on the same terms and conditions that applied under in-bundle usage.

Must I be warned before my data runs out? Yes. Depletion notifications must be sent at 50%, 80% and 100% of a bundle, by SMS, push notification or another applicable means, unless you have opted out of receiving them.

Can I roll over unused data? Your licensee must provide an option to roll over unused data before its expiry date. Rolled-over data must then be used first, before newly allocated data.

Can I give data to someone else? You must be given an option to transfer data to other end-users using the services of the same licensee. There is no obligation to allow transfers to another network.

Do these rules apply to every provider? No. The Regulations expressly do not apply to mobile virtual network operators, resellers, or internet of things and machine-to-machine services.

What happens to my voice and SMS when they run out? On a post-paid or hybrid plan, where you do not buy more, you must be given an option not to access the depleted services, and must still be able to reach emergency services, customer care, incoming calls, incoming SMSs and other free services.

Where do I complain? To your licensee first. Where it cannot resolve the complaint under its own process, the complaint may be referred to the Authority's alternative dispute resolution.

When did these rules take effect? The amendments were published on 7 May 2018 but were interdicted before commencement; after a settlement, they took effect at midnight on 28 February 2019.