Dan Howdle, a consumer telecoms analyst at www.cable.co.uk, writing for www.visual.capitalist noted that Tanzania leads in comparable quality and lower internet costs.

The reports drawn up last month were quoted by networks like www.allafrica.com, underlining the reliability of the comparative data for internet pricing and quality.

The analyst said Tanzania has the cheapest internet price in East Africa, while Somalia is no longer offering the most affordable mobile internet in Africa, moving to third.

Sudan and Algeria take the first and second places respectively in the cheapest data placing for the continent, he said.

“In Sudan, the cost of mobile internet is $0.27, the cheapest in Africa and fifth in the world. Algeria is second at $0.51 and Somalia is third at $0.60. Tanzania has the cheapest data in East Africa at $0.75 for every gigabyte of data,” the study specified.

The Cable.UK data stretching from December 8, 2020 to February 25, 2021 shows that Rwanda follows Tanzania at $1.25 per gigabyte, Uganda ($1.56) and Burundi ($2.10) while Kenya, which was second in East Africa last year charging $1.04, had reviewed its charges to $2.25 per gigabyte, it elaborated.

Many countries with cheap data have excellent mobile and fixed broadband infrastructure, enabling service providers to offer large amounts of data, and bring down price per gigabyte, it further noted.

Local observers said that the report comes in a situation where some EAC media outlets see Tanzania and the Democratic Republic of Congo as having low quality and high prices for data services, which is discounted by officials at the Tanzania Communication Regulatory Authority (TCRA).

Semu Mwakyanja, the TCRA principal communications officer, said the claims were false and misleading.

“There is no country in the East African region with greater quality and lower cost than Tanzania in data services,” he said, highlighting global data monitoring networks for the validity of his rebuttal.

He said Tanzania has installed state-of-the art, efficient mobile communication infrastructure enabling its leading position in data quality and pricing.

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