South Africa, July 21 -- Infringement

The Icasa 2016 Numbering Plan Regulations prohibit the use of mobile phone number ranges such as 082, 083, or 072, for example, for fixed-location services such as call centers. The cost of contravention is as high as R3m per infringement.

Yet, South Africans are enduring a radically increased volume of spam calls and a large percentage of these are from mobile numbers. These call centres are using prepaid SIM cards which have unlimited calling bundles or they're spoofing mobile numbers to increase their answer rates.

Calling back is impossible and reporting them pointless - the numbers are swapped when they're flagged for abuse.

This practice is effective. Call centres adopting these tactics have...