MALI’S INFRASTRUCTURE: A CONTINENTAL PERSPECTIVE also improved as prices have fallen. The regulator CTR conducts periodic surveys to determine customers’ opinions on the cost and quality of telecommunications services. A comparison of the last two surveys, conducted in 2004 and 2007, shows that the general perception is that the latest developments in the telecom markets have supported economic activity and productivity increases. With respect to prices, the 2007 survey shows a much higher satisfaction with service pricing. The percentage of customers who think that services are affordable more than doubled from 30 percent in 2004 to 67 percent in 2007.

Advanced roaming arrangements for mobile services in ECOWAS area support low call prices. Compared to the rest of Africa, West Africa has made significant progress in promoting preferential roaming arrangements through special intra-operator roaming arrangements. Subscribers who belong to one of these networks can use their mobile handset in the other countries; they do not pay for incoming calls and are charged local rates for outgoing calls. Prepaid users can also recharge their phones in the country in which they are roaming. Two factors explain the relatively advanced integration of ECOWAS’s mobile roaming arrangements. One is the existence of the proactive regional regulatory association for ICT: the West Africa Telecommunications Regulators Association (WATRA). The other is the existence of a number of large mobile operators with a presence in multiple ECOWAS countries. Seven large mobile groups with a multicountry presence dominate the regional telecommunications market.<sup>4</sup> These multicountry networks have provided the basis for the regional roaming arrangements that essentially collapsed into three roaming areas: Orange Zone, Zain One, and One World (table 15). Within these areas, roaming charges are very modestly priced.

**Table 15. Intra-roaming networks in ECOWAS**

|**Network**|**Countries**|
|---|---|
|Orange Zone|Available for subscribers in Côte d’Ivoire, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Mali, Niger, and Senegal|
|Zain One|Available for subscribers in Burkina Faso, Ghana, Niger, Nigeria, and Sierra Leone|
|One World of MTN|Available for subscribers in Benin, Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau and Nigeria.|

Source: Derived from Ampah and others 2009 (in AICD ECOWAS Infrastructure, 2010).

Also in a regional perspective, within the recent boom of investment, Mali has been overcoming its condition of landlocked country. Aa a partial and unintended consequence of the lack of coordination among international, Mali has four exits to the international submarine cable South Atlantic 3 (SAT3)/WASC, which extends from Malaysia to South Africa and then up the West Coast of Africa to Portugal and Spain. There are 2 different corridors (Bamako–Dakar, and Bamalo–Abijan) but 4 parallel links (figure 19). This duplication of infrastructure, while inefficient from the economic perspective, represents in practice a concrete mechanism for operators to guarantee their access to international facilitates.

> 4 Etisalat, France Telecom, Maroc Telecom, Millicom, MTC (Zain), MTN, and Comium.

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