Differing tariffs by telecommunication operators in the region are one of the key challenges holding back the region’s One Network Area (ONA), denying East Africans affordable options to seamlessly communicate across borders.

 

The East African Community (EAC) secretariat has revealed that different telcos set their own roaming tariffs, blatantly defying the caps set by the bloc and discouraging users from roaming when they travel within the region.“Differing tariffs and fees create an uneven playing field, discouraging full participation in regional roaming,” the secretariat said in a new report evaluating the success of ONA and its challenges.

Added to a host of other market, operational and policy issues, the lack of tariff harmonisation is slowing the success of the unified telecommunication framework, which was created primarily to cut cross-border communication costs, especially for calls and short messaging services (SMS).

More than 12 years after its launch, ONA has failed to deliver affordable and efficient cross-border communication options, creating a barrier to intra-EAC trade.

Today, six countries – Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda, Burundi and South Sudan – are ONA members, but calling from one country to another is still costlier than making local calls, an indication that the platform has had limited success.

Currently, cross-border call rates within the region are capped at $0.07 per minute under ONA, while SMS charges are capped at $0.027 per message and data at $0.05 per megabit, but several operators charge much higher rates.

Tanzania’s Vodacom currently charges $0.096, while Yas (formerly Tiggo) charges up to $0.29 per inute, and Rwanda’s MTN charges $0.082 per minute to place calls to neighbours in the region.

The telcos also set their own tariffs for SMS and data roaming that defy the regional caps, making it harder to harmonise rates and denying users cheaper prices as intended by ONA.

But this is not the only challenge standing between East Africans and cheaper cross-border calling, messaging and data-roaming rates.

Some operators also charge interconnection fees, which compound the already high tariffs and raise the cost of roaming. Users have also been found to abuse roaming status by using foreign SIM cards for too long, even after leaving the foreign country.

Operational issues also persist. Uneven service quality, limited 4G and 5G coverage in some countries, weak cross-border connectivity, which causes delays, and weak regional fraud detection continue to derail and discourage roaming in the region.

The EAC secretariat also points to weak enforcement of roaming rules and other policy gaps that limit full utilisation and implementation of the One Network Area.

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