The Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (TRA) yesterday ordered Batelco to reduce its prices and expand its services to allow other operators to access its network.
The TRA is required by law to examine and approve Batelco’s first Reference Access Offer (RAO) - the firm’s basic fee to other operators to access its network.
A specialised team was assigned to review and analyse the firm’s offer, given the importance of the RAO to the market, the TRA said in a statement.
Batelco was also asked to provide additional information to justify the basis of the tariffs it proposed to charge.
Having reviewed the RAO, the TRA said it was not satisfied that Batelco set fair and reasonable tariffs, terms and conditions in accordance with the provisions of the Telecommunications Law and the Access Regulation.
It said in spite of requests to Batelco to provide proper justifications for certain costs the TRA did not receive them.
This prompted the TRA to start the formal procedure of asking Batelco to respond to the specific concerns that had not been resolved.
Competition
Officials at the TRA told the GDN they were unable to reveal what Batelco charges other operators for access to its network as the order contains commercially confidential information.
The charges would soon be made public, said a spokeswoman.
Batelco officials said they could not comment until they had personally seen the document order.
“We will have to study the paper and see what kind of impact it will have on our operation and we will issue a statement in the next few days,” a spokesman said.
Meanwhile, TRA general director Andreas Avgousti said that it had issued the order to carry out Bahrain’s policy of promoting competition so that consumers can benefit from liberalisation and introduction of competition.
“We had to make adjustments to the RAO issued by Batelco so that it would be fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory,” he said.
“I am well aware that Batelco, like other dominant operators in other countries, is not happy when it has to offer such services at prices that it does not consider appropriate.
“I am equally aware that new entrants will not be happy either because they would like to see further decreases in the prices, obligations of quality of service as well as other services.”
He added that the RAO was due for review in the next six months, which gives Batelco and other operators an opportunity to bring up any concerns they have when applying it to the TRA, so these could be taken into account.
GDN :: Geoffrey Bew :: 13 July, ‘06
July 13th, 2006 at 4:27 pm
Nice! but let’s see how far it affects Batelco…I am so hating this 15GB cap.
July 14th, 2006 at 1:45 am
gr8 news mate …we have to wait and c what will happen:p
July 14th, 2006 at 7:50 am
this doesnt make sense
why did the TRA actualy accept the new batelco packages in the first place then??
they should of said no in the first place
July 14th, 2006 at 9:00 am
Last month, Batelco wanted to sue the TRA? What happened on that matter?
July 14th, 2006 at 9:32 am
The law suit is still ongoing as far as I can tell. Batelco wanted to take it to international court rather than Bahraini courts of law - the thinking is that the case is essentially by an arm of the Bahraini government against another arm of the Bahraini government!
But this move, the order to reduce fees, might have been a direct result of increased public awareness of Batelco’s practices.
July 15th, 2006 at 11:08 am
does that mean we have to wait six months till something happens?
I want unlimited inet back.
I can’t survive on this stupid 15GB cap.
July 15th, 2006 at 6:04 pm
Anya, tell me about it. It’s horrible being restricted like this. And if they even start a higher cap/unlimited package its going to be horribly expensive. Why don’t they just up the limits for the time being, or make the capped speeds more bearable like from 1mbit down to 256k rather than 64k!
July 15th, 2006 at 10:26 pm
I wish something like that would happen as a temporary solution. ~_~;;
Though, I think it would be unfair if unlimited packages were expensive. I mean, we were paying 50 bd before. I just wish everything would go back to the way it used to be.
Thinking beforehand of the size of a file .. or if I have enough MB to download a specific file… it’s just so frustrating! >:/
July 16th, 2006 at 2:34 pm
Having to “think” about whether you have enough bandwidth left for the day/month before downloading a file is simply not the way we should be forced to use the internet. I used to enjoy watching movie trailers and game previws in high-quality streaming format, now I either choose the rubbish 56k stream or don’t watch them at all.
July 16th, 2006 at 4:13 pm
I think reducing the price (BD40) would be a good TEMPORARY solution, even if it means getting less speed (say 256kbps) however the limit can’t go under 15gb, it’s so frustrating already!
using the internet is so stressful these days, i wish this would end soon.