Bahrain’s involvement in telecoms goes all the way back to the mid-19th century when the island became a way station for the telegraph cable linking India and Europe. The kingdom was also the first country in the Middle East to launch internet services in 1995, and was the first country in the GCC region to liberalise and open up its ICT...
Bahrain now has a solid telecoms market with customers benefitting from a diverse array of services and increasingly competitive rates. The 2014 World Bank “Broadband Networks in the Middle East and North Africa” report singled out Bahrain as having the only mature broadband market in the MENA region, as well as being one of only two countries in the region to have a fully open telecoms market...
Bahrain has embarked on a reworking of its subsidy framework in a bid to ease the budgetary pressures associated with the fall in oil prices. Meanwhile, the government is also pushing forward with diversification efforts, with the kingdom’s $32bn investment strategy fuelling activity in various areas of the economy.
Providing countrywide high-speed internet service is the overarching aim of Bahrain’s latest master plan for the kingdom’s ICT industry.
Telecoms operators across Bahrain have become increasingly spectrum-hungry over the past few years. Since the late 2000s, when uptake of smart-phones began to rise sharply, then-existing 3G capacity started to look increasingly inadequate. At the same time, margins of voice services have continued to decline, prompting telecoms firms to seek...
Bahrain has a history of involvement with telecoms that dates back to 1864, when the island became a way station for the telegraph cable link between India and Europe. It was the first country in the Middle East to install a mainframe computer (at the Bahrain Petroleum Company, BAPCO, in 1962), to install a satellite station (1969) and to...
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