South Africa’s biggest mobile operators want to allow each person up to 20 Sim cards per network, four times the limit of five per operator proposed by Icasa. They also accuse the regulator of giving itself powers it doesn’t have.
The 20-Sim limit is part of a framework agreement that members of the Association of Comms & Technology (ACT), which represents Vodacom, MTN, Telkom, Cell C, Rain and Liquid Intelligent Technologies, signed in June. The limit applies per person on each network, so someone could in principle hold 20 Sims with each operator.
“South Africans are different,” ACT CEO Nomvuyiso Batyi said in an interview in an upcoming episode of the TechCentral Show. “The 20 is not cast in stone. If somebody says, ‘I want 40 or 50 because I have a larger pool of dependants that I need to register’, then that needs to be taken care of.”
Icasa’s draft amendments to its numbering regulations, published on 28 October, would cap subscribers at five numbers per operator. They would also require a fingerprint or face check against home affairs records for every new Sim and Sim swap, and give operators two years to re-verify existing customers. ACT has said it won’t back the measures in their current form.
WhatsApp scams are now the biggest problem, followed by fraud using stolen phones, and one-time Pin fraud is on the rise.
Nomvuyiso Batyi
Asked whether Icasa should step in until Rica is rewritten, Batyi said there was a case for it to act on numbering, but that ACT would contest the draft in its formal comments. “There are challenges that we see, where you’re giving yourself powers that you do not have,” she said.
She said Icasa had sat in on the industry’s meetings with the department of justice & constitutional development and had seen ACT’s research, so the draft “came as a surprise”. Icasa has told TechCentral it won’t comment.
Competition Commission watching
The industry’s own plan is being overseen by the Competition Commission. Under the commission’s rules, an independent third party checks operators’ readiness and compliance with the framework, Batyi said. In a letter last week, it told ACT that any technical solution must be brought back to it for approval before being implemented. ACT had targeted a soft launch in January, and now expects to need about another month.
The solutions being worked on centre on “liveness” tests, which confirm that a real person, rather than a photo or a copied ID, is present when a Sim is registered. A key aim is to equip informal sellers, such as vendors at taxi ranks, to verify customers. Batyi said ACT had found agents in rural areas registering Sims over 2G connections.
Checks against the home affairs database will add to the cost. “It’s R10 per check… It adds up,” Batyi said. ACT has approached home affairs’ CIO to check that its proposed solutions are in line with the department’s systems.
ACT has also asked the justice department to scrap Rica’s requirement that subscribers provide a physical address. Batyi said most people in rural areas and informal settlements don’t have one, and that location data could be used instead.
She was sceptical of Icasa’s plan to re-verify every existing subscriber within two years, comparing it with the stalled migration to digital television. “It’s almost like you’re setting us up, as South Africans, for failure,” she said. ACT instead plans a campaign from January urging people to check how many Sims are registered under their ID numbers.
Sim-swap fraud “hasn’t gone away”, Batyi said, but it is “not as big as it was”. WhatsApp scams are now the biggest problem, followed by fraud using stolen phones, and one-time Pin fraud is on the rise, she said. – (c) 2026 NewsCentral Media
