Dominican Republic has signed and ratified the United Nations (UN) Convention on the Use of Electronic Communications in International Contracts.

Law No. 358-05 provides a comprehensive framework for consumer protection that also applies to online transactions.

According to Decree No. 402-05 approving the Regulations for the Express Dispatch of Shipments, the de minimis threshold, that is the minimum value of goods below which customs do not charge duties, is USD 200.

According to Art. 29 of Law No. 183-02 foreign exchange brokerage may only be carried out by authorized financial brokerage entities and by Exchange Agents. Art. 30 states that to be an Exchange Agent it is necessary to be constituted as a joint stock company organized in accordance with the laws of the Dominican Republic, with the objects clause and the exclusive habitual activity of carrying out exchange intermediation in free market conditions in the national territory, as well as abroad under the modality of remittance company.

Self-certification is allowed for foreign businesses. According to chapter IX of the Telecommunications Law, Art. 61, any terminal, equipment or system likely to be connected to a public telecommunications network, or which uses the public telecommunications network, or which uses the public radio-electric domain, must have the corresponding have the corresponding homologation certificate. It is reported that the following products require INDOTEL’s approval: Tablets; Personal trackers; Wireless microphones; 3G/4G mobile phones; RFID equipment; Radio alarms; Laptops.

A basic legal framework on intermediary liability beyond copyright infringement is absent in Dominican Republic's law and jurisprudence.

It is reported that the Dominican Republic imposes an identity requirement for SIM registration. Anyone wanting to purchase a SIM card has to provide their national ID card, or a passport in case of foreigners, to activate a new prepaid SIM card.

Chapter XV of the Dominican Republic-Central America Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA-DR) of 2007 between the United States of America, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua devotes its Art. 27 to the limitations of liability of intermediaries for copyright infringement in the digital environment. This is applicable in the country by mandate of Art. 26.2 of the Constitution of the Republic, which establishes that the rules in force of ratified international conventions shall govern internally. However, it is reported that, in practice, there have been cases in 2013 in which the courts have considered that companies liable not only for violating copyright, but also for the mere fact of hosting the website where the infringement takes place and therefore encouraging the infringement through its economic sponsorship.

Personal Data Protection Law No. 172-13 provides a comprehensive framework for data protection.

Under Art. 80 of the Law No. 172-13, personal data may only be transferred internationally if the owner of the data expressly authorizes such transfer, or if such transfer is necessary for the performance of a contract between the owner of the data and the person or entity responsible for the treatment of the personal data. Data transfer is considered a form of 'treatment' of personal data under Art. 6.20 of Law.

The Dominican Republic has not acceded to any agreement with binding commitments to open data transfers across borders. However, Art. 13.2 of DR-CAFTA provides that "Each Party shall ensure that enterprises of another Party may use public telecommunications services for the movement of information in its territory or across its borders and for access to information contained in databases or otherwise stored in machine-readable form in the territory of any Party". Notwithstanding the foregoing, "a Party may take such measures as are necessary to: (a) ensure the security and confidentiality of messages; or (b) protect the privacy of non-public personal data of subscribers to public telecommunications services, subject to the requirement that such measures are not applied in a manner that would constitute a means of arbitrary or unjustifiable discrimination or disguised restriction on trade in services".

The Dominican Republic has appended the World Trade Organization (WTO) Telecom Reference Paper to its schedule of commitments.

According to Art. 76 of the General Telecommunications law, the Dominican Telecommunications Institute (INDOTEL), the executive authority for the supervision and administration of services in the telecommunications sector, is independent from the government in the decision-making process.

The Dominican Republic does not mandate functional separation for operators with significant market power (SMP) in the telecom market. However, there is an obligation of accounting separation since 2019. According to Art. 30 of the Law No. 153/1998 - General Telecommunications Law (Ley N° 153/1998 - Ley General de las Telecomunicaciones), in case a concessionaire provides several public telecommunications services, it must keep separate accounts for each service, in order to enable the control of fair and effective competition.

There is an obligation for passive infrastructure sharing in the country to deliver telecom services to end users. It is practiced in the mobile sector and in the fixed sector based on commercial agreements. According to Art. 5 of the Infrastructure Sharing Regulation passive infrastructure providers shall share passive infrastructures or related facilities requested by the requesting providers, provided that such sharing is feasible from the technical, security and operational point of view. Such sharing shall be done in a non-discriminatory manner, at fair and reasonable prices and conditions. Infrastructure owners shall facilitate access to such infrastructure on equal, transparent and non-discriminatory terms to providers that install or operate public telecommunications networks. Infrastructure sharing is effective in both the mobile and fixed sectors.