MANAMA: Mobile telephone penetration at the end of Q2 2016 reached 201% and at the end of Q2 of this year, prepaid mobile subscriptions represented 80% of total mobile subscriptions. Continuing with the tendency of the last years, in Q2 2016 the number of fixed telephony subscriptions decreased by 4% or fixed telephony witnessed a drop by total of 9,000 subscriptions comparing to 2015.
Keeping abreast with the development of the telecom sector, the Kingdom of Bahrain is working as per the plan to introduce the 5G spectrum by the year 2019.
“Bahrain is moving in the right direction to achieve the 2019 target for the 5G as there is no hurry otherwise to introduce this spectrum as neighbouring countries are also working on this spectrum, Dr Mohammed Al Amer, Chairman TRA told reporters on the sidelines of the Arab ICT Forum 2016 held at the Gulf Hotel.
Referring to the telecommunication sector’s health and contribution the Chairman said that all indicators show upward trends which according to him remains a good success story for Bahrain. According to the statistics published by the TRA, mobile service closed Q2 2016 with 2.8 million subscriptions, the number of mobile subscriptions grew by 11% comparing to end of 2015.
At the end of Q2 2016, fixed wire telephony represented 75% of total fixed lines, compared to 73% at the end of 2015. While the fixed wireless shows, a significate decrease (64,542 lines in 2015 to 56,958 lines in Q2 2016), the number of fixed wired telephony lines decreased by 1,300 only during the same period.
In terms of broadband, at the end of Q2 2016, there were about 2.04 million broadband subscriptions, a 2% increase compared to Q4 2015. Broadband penetration reached 145% at the end of Q2 2016. The main driver for the growth of broadband subscriptions is the mobile broadband subscriptions. Mobile broadband subscriptions represented 92% of total broadband subscriptions at the end of Q2 2016
After 6 years of continuous growing, Standalone mobile broadband (e.g. dongle, USB, tablet) decreased slightly by less than 1% between Q2 2016 and 2015. Mobile broadband represents 81% of mobile broadband subscriptions at the end of Q2 2016.
