Neutralizing the Demand and Costs Bandwidth Connectiivity in the EA Univeristies

Institutions require integration of ICT in daily activities of administration, research, teaching and outreach services to community. Technology advancement has allowed educational activities to be undertaken ubiquitously through the internet connection. These types of activities call for provision of more bandwidth, which happen to be expensive in particular in the East African region. Several factors contribute to high bandwidth prices one of them being lack of affordable distribution networks to universities in the region. Most of the East African countries do not have private or public national backbone networks to extend access to major towns and cross-border let alone the distribution in the landing towns. The highest cost components are due to national distribution network and the last mile connectivity to universities. International bandwidth prices have fallen to under $50 Mb/s for a typical NREN. Strategies to strengthen NRENs and reduce costs for national distribution network and the last mile connectivity to universities could have a significant impact on reducing the price of bandwidth in East African universities. It is recommended that the Inter-University Council for East Africa (IUCEA) promotes NRENs in the region, in terms of regulatory support and in funding capital development of their networks as well as human capacity development.