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Business Reporter
LOCAL telecommunication firms could be flouting regulations and short-changing their customers by imposing a time limit on data bundles, which expire if not utilised within the fixed prescribed period.

This is despite the fact that there are provisions in the operators’ licences that they should reimburse customers for unused data, but inexplicably, this is not being enforced.

Telecoms expert and chairman of Broadlands Network, Mr Chemist Siziba, yesterday said that according to regulatory provisions network operators must sign customer service level agreements binding them to reimbursing customers if they do not meet agreed service level.

“Every operator of a network must sign a customer service level agreement, which shows what quality of service they should provide. A customer must be satisfied the quality is according to the agreement.”

“Here, if you buy a data bundle, you lose the airtime if you do not use it within the stipulated time, this does not make sense. I should determine how and when to use my airtime,” Mr Siziba said.

“In Zimbabwe, we have such a law which says that as a service provider if you do not deliver in terms of the agreement, you must reimburse the customer,” said the Broadlands chairman in an interview.

Efforts to get a comment from Postal and Telecommunications regulatory Authority of Zimbabwe director general Mr Alfred Marisa were not successful by the time of going to print yesterday.

According to international media reports, United States operator Republic Wireless is set to test a plan that pays consumers back for unused data at the end of the month, contrary to tradition of data expiry.

This plan runs contrary to the general industry standard of expiring data that customers have paid for, but will not have exhausted.

As a mobile virtual network operator Republic has arguably fewer costs associated with its network than traditional network operators.

The move is part of a wider programme among US operators including carrier grade Wi-Fi calling and automated handovers to Wi-Fi to save consumers data cost, as ICT’s become more critical to business.

In South Africa, mobile operators argue that the policy of expiring data was part of necessary business operations to sustain networks.

Despite that though, the cost of data has declined from around R40 per megabyte in the early 2000s to around R2/MB this year, out of bundle.

In Zimbabwe regulator, the Postal and Telecommunications Regulatory Authority of Zimbabwe recently defended charges for mobile data and internet services despite concerns from the public that telecoms operators could be making up for the reduced voice revenues by inflating the cost of mobile data services.

But a senior Potraz official told this newspaper that mobile telecoms firms were not inflating their data rates since it also falls under regulation. An annual comparison shows that internet subscriptions grew by 7,4 percent to reach 5 879 552 subscriptions from 5 472 710 at the end of 2013.