Making a call to China or America from Kenya is cheaper than calling within the East African Community (EAC), in spite of efforts to eliminate roaming charges and make phone calls cheaper through the One Network Area (ONA).
Calling within the EAC is so expensive that one would spend less per minute when placing a call to India from Kenya than to Tanzania or Burundi.
The Democratic Republic of the Congo and Somalia, the newest members of the bloc, are yet to join the ONA, which was supposed to be part of the efforts to ease the flow of trade by easing the cost of telecommunication, but data from the Communication Authority of Kenya (CA) show that the objective is far from met.
According to the current tariff charges, it costs only Ksh5.5 ($0.043) to call the USA, compared with Ksh7 (0.054) to call Rwanda, which is the cheapest among the EAC partner states. It costs Ksh6.05 ($0.047) per minute to call India, and Ksh 8.75 ($0.068) to make a similar call to South Sudan.
According to the Kenya Bureau of Statistics, in 2023, Burundi had the highest average international rate at Ksh100 ($0.77) per minute, followed by Tanzania at Ksh43.33 ($0.33), Rwanda at Ksh22 ($0.17) and Uganda at Ksh12.33 ($0.093) per minute.
The reasons for the high cost are disparate tax regimes across the region, lack of integration of payment systems and grey traffic, which degrades the quality of calls and erodes revenue to economies.
Grey traffic in telecommunication is a situation where foreign calls enter the system as though they originate locally, dodging the usual route.
“In the region, when we are talking about expanding the tax base, I think telecommunication has been where the public sector thinks they can derive a lot of taxes from. These high costs and un-harmonised charges underscore the EABC’s recommendation to EAC partner States to eliminate and harmonise taxes and charges on roaming services as part of the ONA initiative,” he told The EastAfrican.
“By reducing these costs and harmonising fees across the region, the EAC can encourage more equitable and robust communication flows between partner states, thereby enhancing regional integration and economic cooperation.”
The costs notwithstanding, the telecommunications sector is still seen as one of the areas most integrated, due to liberalisation that has enabled easier use of services even when travelling beyond one’s locality.
“Despite the liberalisation, several challenges constrain the growth of the sector. For example, based on the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) 2020 data, the region is yet to cover all populations with mobile 3G data.”
3G is the basic standard for internet service. Telecoms in the region have mostly rolled out 4G network and some have trialled 5G. Yet there are many areas without internet service at all.
According to the Kenya CA’s Third Quarter Sector Statistics Report for 2023/24, in-bound roaming traffic from EAC partner states to Kenya showed significant variation, with Uganda’s incoming voice amounting to 23 million minutes, Tanzania 83 million minutes, Rwanda 15.8 million minutes, South Sudan had 2.5 million minutes, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo 7,000 minutes.
Burundi recorded the lowest inbound roaming traffic, with only 725 minutes.
“This disparity in roaming traffic is closely linked to the high costs of international calls within the region,” Mr Njau said.
The ONA is based on a key set of regulatory interventions, which include eliminating charges for receiving voice calls while roaming, and a waiver of excise taxes and surcharges on incoming voice traffic while establishing wholesale and retail price caps on outbound traffic, and requiring mobile network operators to re-negotiate with their roaming partners to reduce wholesale tariffs.
David Mugonyi, CA Director-General, said the ONA framework only applies to traffic originating and terminating within the EAC region. Such traffic is exempted from surcharges on international incoming traffic.
“Regional retail tariff in ONA partner states is capped at $0.10 per minute,” Mr Mugonyi said. “This retail rate included inter-operator tariffs (IOT) for the region capped at $0.07 per minute -- based on the average of the minimums of the countries.”
Another factor as to why the calls remain expensive compared with Asia and the US is the fact that even those EAC partner states that joined the ONA are yet to harmonise tariffs with the different network operators in the region.
Kenya, Rwanda, South Sudan and Uganda are implementing the framework, with some reporting unique challenges that could only be solved holistically across the region. Tanzania joined late, in 2021, and is yet to conclude bilateral negotiations by all operators.
Burundi’s entry on August 1 means six out of the eight partner states are now part of the initiative, which promises cheaper calls and mobile data roaming charges across the bloc.
In a statement on July 29, Burundi Telecommunications Regulation and Control Agency (ACRT) announced the entry into the ONA with effect from August 1, 2024, with new tariffs for regional roaming.
The ACRT directed mobile network operators to clearly communicate the applicable tariffs for regional direct and roaming framework communications and apply the detailed billing to verify the communications made and the amounts invoiced, adding that this would ensure a transparent, reliable and satisfactory user experience.
Andrea Aguer Ariik, EAC Deputy Secretary-General in charge of Infrastructure, Productive, Social and Political Sectors, said the move would ease doing of business in East Africa and aid the free movement of persons, workers, services and capital as enshrined in the EAC Common Market Protocol.
“The entry of Burundi will reduce the high cost of mobile roaming charges in the region and strengthen the integration process because East Africans can now communicate more easily without fear of high billing charges on mobile calls whether at home or in another Partner State,” he said, when he spoke on behalf of Secretary-General Veronica Nduva.
The EAC partner States made a joint commitment in 2014 to create an ONA for the then five economies of the bloc, Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania, Uganda, with the benefits extended to South Sudan when it later joined. But Tanzania only joined in 2021.
“The EAC is conducting some studies to review the calling rates including cost of data within the region,” Mr Ariik said.
“The EAC is conducting some studies to review the calling rates including the cost of data within the region. Once studies have been concluded, we will be able to compare the cost of calling within EAC and other economic communities such as the EU.”
