04 September 2020

Investigations have uncovered widespread theft of airtime by unscrupulous wireless application service providers (WASPs), enabled by network operators like Vodacom, MTN and Cell C in South Africa.  

According to My Broadband, these WASPs sign cell phone users up to subscription services without their permission, and siphon off small amounts of airtime each day from each person.

They fraudulently subscribe South Africans to content subscription services without their knowledge or consent. Furthermore, through these fraudulent subscriptions, they steal millions in airtime from mobile subscribers every day.

Although the exact scale of this fraud has never officially been reported, conservative estimates by industry players suggest it amounts to billions of rands.

Mobile operators can block WASP billing by default, but despite a decade of fraud and billions in airtime stolen, they refuse to implement this solution.

The problem goes even deeper. In some of the cases where airtime was stolen, the mobile operators themselves acted as the WASP.

That means the airtime was stolen from Vodacom and MTN subscribers through fraudulent subscriptions to content services offered by Vodacom and MTN themselves. A rogue WASP can fraudulently subscribe 60,000 mobile users to their services and bill them R5 each per day, adding up to R110m per year.