On July 22, 2025, the Wireless Application Service Providers Association (WASPA) of South Africa launched Version 17.14 of its Code of Conduct, further standardizing rules governing mobile content, subscriptions, bulk SMS, direct marketing, and complaint handling. The new version focuses on extending the retention period for key business records and maintains the fast-track alert resolution mechanism, requiring members to promptly implement corrective actions upon receiving WASPA compliance notices, thereby enhancing consumer protection and industry self-regulation.
Version 17.14 uniformly extends the retention period for multiple categories of records to five years, covering service records, ad hoc transactions, subscription confirmations, formal complaints, and appeal procedures, among others. When handling complaints, members shall be able to provide customer interaction logs, marketing materials, subscription authorizations, and unsubscribe records. For SMS marketing and bulk messaging, service providers must offer an effective opt-out mechanism; where technically feasible, users may send "STOP" to unsubscribe, and commands such as "END", "CANCEL", "UNSUBSCRIBE", or "QUIT" shall receive equivalent processing.
The Code continues to stipulate that enterprises shall not send direct marketing messages to users who have already unsubscribed or are registered on WASPA's "Do Not Contact" list, but this shall not result in the interception of non-marketing messages such as transactional notifications. Marketing messages must also disclose the sending entity and contact information for stopping communications, and service providers shall, upon request, be able to prove the source of contact details and user consent.
WASPA first introduced the fast-track compliance mechanism in its "Heads Up" notice issued on April 20, 2017. This mechanism has been retained in Version 17.14: WASPA may directly issue issue notices to relevant members, who must respond within two working days; if corrective actions are deemed sufficient, the matter may be closed; otherwise, members may be granted an additional remediation period or the case may be escalated to the formal complaint process. For A2P aggregators, this means that auditable processes must be established for marketing customer onboarding, authorization record-keeping, unsubscribe command identification, and complaint response, and non-compliant traffic may be subject to suspension or remediation requirements.
