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Telecommunications

Bahrain’s telecommunications infrastructure is the most mature and advanced in the GCC. It dates back to 1864 when Bahrain was connected to the Indo-European undersea telegraphic cable, heralding the beginning of the Kingdom’s telecommunications industry.

In 1999, Bahrain became one of the first countries in the world to have a fully digitised network. More recently, Bahrain has led the introduction of mobile communications and in 2002, legislation was passed to open up the industry to competition. In 2004, Bahrain became the first Gulf state to have a fully liberalised telecoms market, supervised by the Telecommunications Regulatory Authority.

Bahrain’s telecom providers offer the full spectrum of telecommunications solutions for residential and business customers and span a comprehensive array of mobile services, international roaming, high speed Internet connections, WiFi, MPLS IP-VPN network provisioning and management, datacoms and other fixed line services.

For further details please visit Batelco and Zain (formally MTC-Vodafone)

Bahrain International Exchange

The role of the Bahrain International Exchange is to connect Internet Service Providers, in order to increase local traffic and content, as well as reduce the cost of purchasing international bandwidth. It is a policy to encourage investors to set-up ISPs and reduce the barriers of entry into the Bahraini market.

The Telecommunications Regulatory Authority has begun licensing ISPs in 2006, and there is no limit to the number of ISPs that can be licensed in Bahrain, as well as the amount of foreign equity in any of the ISPs.