EAC Pushes New Plan to Cut Regional Mobile Roaming Charges

The East African Community (EAC) has started a fresh round of talks in Dar es Salaam aimed at lowering mobile roaming charges across the region.

The discussions, running from May 25 to 29, 2026, have brought together telecom experts, regulators, policymakers and regional institutions under the EAC Technical Committee on Telecommunications.

Officials are reviewing findings from a regional assessment of the current roaming framework while also examining a proposed long-term system expected to harmonise mobile roaming services across the bloc’s eight member states.

The proposed framework seeks to introduce cost-based tariffs, stronger consumer protection measures and common enforcement systems. Recommendations from the meeting will later be presented to the EAC Sectoral Council on Transport, Communications and Meteorology for possible approval.

The move reflects growing concern over the high cost of cross-border communication within East Africa. Traders, transport operators, tourists, students and businesses continue to face expensive voice and data charges while moving across the region.

The latest effort also signals recognition that earlier agreements delivered mixed results.

The EAC first adopted a roaming framework in 2014 to reduce the cost of calls, SMS and internet services between member states. Some countries later adopted parts of the One Network Area initiative, but implementation remained uneven across the bloc.

So far, six of the eight EAC member states have implemented parts of the initiative, while efforts continue to bring the Democratic Republic of Congo and Somalia on board.

In countries where the framework has been applied, regulators say communication costs have dropped sharply.

Data from Tanzania’s communications regulator shows that between March and June 2025, the average cost of calls from Tanzania to other EAC countries dropped by 61%, from Sh627.80 to Sh247.52 per minute.

During the same period, international call traffic rose to more than 156 million minutes, compared to about nine million minutes recorded four years earlier.

The proposed reforms will also target internet services. The next phase of the One Network Area programme is expected to introduce e-SIMs, Internet of Things services and capped roaming data charges of $0.005 per megabyte.

Kenyan President William Ruto has also called on East African states to complete the One Network Area framework, arguing that communication within the bloc should operate more like a domestic service.