Bahrain’s Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (TRA) yesterday announced it has ordered Batelco to reduce some of the prices it charges rival firms to use its network. In a statement, the TRA said despite several debates with Batelco officials on the incumbent operator’s interconnection charges, the regulator “was not satisfied that all charges were fair and reasonable”.

Last night, Batelco told GDN it would not appeal the decision and would comply with the regulator’s demands.

The TRA said it hoped its decision to make Batelco reduce its Reference Interconnection Offer (RIO) to other firms would be passed onto the end user in the form of lower bills.

“The RIO is the basic offer by Batelco to other licensed operators (OLOs) that allows them to provide telecommunications services to their customers as well as connect to Batelco’s network so that their customers can communicate with Batelco’s customers,” the TRA said in its statement.
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Bahrain, one of the first countries to deregulate its telecom sector, will also be the first country in the Middle East to be covered 100 per cent by the state-of-the-art wireless network WiMax to be deployed in the Kingdom by the US giant Motorola for Mena Telecom.

Mena Telecom, a subsidiary of Kuwait Finance House (KFH), signed a major agreement with Motorola Inc to plan, deploy and manage a nationwide 802.16e-based mobile WiMax and IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) network in the Bahrain.

Abdulhakeem Al Khayyat, chairman of Mena Telecom and general manager of KFH, who signed the agreement with Motorola’s vice-president Middle East & Africa Networks and Enterprise Ali Amer, told a Press conference that the Kingdom’s attractive telecom sector would help to elevate the standard of services and also to attract foreign investments.
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