The TRA has once again imposed its power and issued the second Order to Batelco this year. The order forces Batelco to revise their Reference Access Offer (The services and prices offered to other ISPs, allowing them to use Batelco’s network)
Batelco had 2 weeks to implement these changes, and they have done so just as the deadline passed (July 26th). The new RO is available here on Batelco’s website, as well as the full original here (pdf) on the TRA’s website.
This is good news for everyone in Bahrain. There are many points in the order but the following are some highlights:
- Batelco is now forced to offer all of its fixed telephony services to competitors
- These services more importantly include Wholesale DSL and Bitstream
- The full RO has now been published on the Batelco website, as well as the PDF version on the TRA’s website
- As an example, Batelco is current offering 1Mb (15Gb threshold) for BD 40. They now have to offer the same service to other service providers for BD 32. That means if another ISP can keep their overheads below BD 8, they can offer the same service at a cheaper price. Effectively, other ISPs could offer the service at BD 32 if they wish to do so.
- The imposed Bitstream service is even better, as the price for 1Mb ADSL circuit is BD 23. This means other ISPs just have to add their cost of providing 10:1 Internet on this link, which could be BD 10 to 20 for unlimited usage. A BD 50 unlimited usage 1Mb service is very realistic now.
- The rollout of Bitstream service includes creating an aggregation point in Seef area, which is planned to be done in October, this is good because BIX is also in the same area so it will be very cheap for ISPs to get Internet uplinks.
- The second requirement for Bitstream is Batelco Exchanges to be equipped with DSLAMs for the Bitstream service. Unfortuantely Batelco is planning to do this by June 2007, almost one year away.
However, Batelco as it should be is not happy about this and is currently appealing the Access Order in arbitration proceedings. All these changes are subject to the Arbitration process. It is not clear whether this means that other service providers have to wait for the Arbitration process to end before being able to take advantage of these offer, but the guess is that since the TRA have taken such a firm stance, they will put all their weight behind this order so that it is not subject to and will not be modified by any appeal.
It is now up to other service providers to take advantage of these offers. Batelco will try to delay this into 2008, but subject to the arbitration, we are looking at a best case scenario of October 2006 and a worst case scenario of June 2007, to have better telecommunications offers.
ed: this is the news that we were waiting for on the 12th! now all is clear.