The east Africa community will face the ultimate litmus test when dealing with costs among countries and policy harmonization. For instance, one of the challenges facing SAT 3 is a discriminatory tendency among regional operators, which charge more in one country compared to others even when the infrastructure is the same.

Though Ndemo insists that the region is working on policy harmonization to ensure nondiscriminatory provision of services, the EAC is not known for its speed in debating and passing policy documents.

Whether the issues are resolved or not, it is clear that access, content, reach and availability, quality of services and ICT literacy are just as important as the bandwidth cost.