EAST AFRICA’S INFRASTRUCTURE: A REGIONAL PERSPECTIVE African Development Community (SADC) (table 4.1). This finding reflects the complete absence of submarine cables on the eastern side of Africa at that time.

Regional indicators of information and communication technologies (ICTs) mask significant variations across countries (table 4.2). Mobile (GSM) signal coverage ranged between 60 to 90 percent of the population in most countries but was as low as 10 percent in Ethiopia. Notwithstanding high signal coverage, only a handful of countries (Kenya, Sudan, Tanzania, Uganda) had achieved mobile penetration of around 20 percent or more. Initial uptake of mobile telephony in Sudan was slow, with less than 4 percent of the population owning a mobile phone in 2003. The slow uptake is partially attributable to a lack of coverage, poor availability of prepaid services, and the price incurred by customers receiving calls. Yet as these impediments have eased, penetration has increased, growing by 500 percent since 2005.

Prices vary widely among countries. Most recent estimates for mobile prices range from less than $3 per month for a standard basket of services in Ethiopia and Sudan to almost $10 per month in Kenya. The median price for a standard basket of services in the region is around $9. The price of dial-up service (based on 2007 estimates) reveals wide variation—by a factor of 10—across countries, ranging from $15 per month in Ethiopia to $150 per month in Tanzania.

**Table 4.1 . Benchmarking ICT infrastructure across Africa’s regional communities**

||ECOWAS|CEMAC|COMESA|EAC|SADC|
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|Broadband subscribers (per 100 inhabitants)|0.03|0.01|0.04|**0.02**|0.36|
|International Internet bandwidth (per capita)|16|11|9|**11**|19|
|Internet subscribers (per 100 inhabitants|0.24|0.06|0.09|**0.05**|0.53|
|Main telephone lines outside largest city (per 100<br>inhabitants)|0.39|0.20|0.53|**0.24**|1.89|
|Mobile telephone subscribers (per 100 inhabitants)|25|22|12|**21**|31|
|Prepaid mobile phone basket (US$ per month)|14.04|15.11|9.09|**12.18**|11.32|
|Price of three-minute call to United States (US$)|0.83|5.68|2.20|**1.37**|1.50|
|Price of 20-hour Internet basket (US$ per month)|79.98|67.97|50.91|**95.70**|75.60|
|Price of fixed-line phone basket (US$ per month)|9.35|12.59|6.85|**13.33**|13.27|

Source: Ampah and others 2009.

Note: CEMAC = Economic and Monetary Community of Central Africa; COMESA = Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa; EAC = <u>East African Community; ECOWAS = Economic Community of West African States; SADC = Southern African Development Community.</u> In Burundi, Rwanda, Ethiopia, and Sudan, it costs about as much to call within EAC as it does to call the United States. In Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda, it is _much cheaper_ to place a one-minute call to the United States than to call within the community—by as much as 14 cents per minute in Kenya and 19 cents in Tanzania.

Given that fixed-line services have largely been overtaken by mobile services in East Africa, the regional availability of roaming arrangements on mobile tariffs is in many ways a much more relevant measure of the costs of internal communications than the level of international fixed-line tariffs. East Africa pioneered ―borderless mobile roaming‖ with free incoming calls and local tariffs. The scheme was introduced by Zain as a part of its ―One‖ network linking Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda, all primarily Zain networks. To compete, other mobile operators have also allowed regional roaming networks among 48