The Telecommunications Regulatory Authority of the Kingdom of Bahrain (TRA), which released its sixth telecommunications markets indicators report, said the annual gross telecommunications turnover reached BD360 million in 2010, an increase of 6.5% on 2009.
The telecommunications sector remains a major contributor to national wealth. Telecom revenues represented 4.4% of GDP in 2010.
This report covers a large range of telecommunications services indicators, such as the number of subscribers, penetration rates, calls usage, telecommunications revenues, and take-up of regulated access and interconnection services.
In 2010 approximately 2,600 employees worked directly in the telecommunications sector, an increase of 43% since market liberalisation in 2003.
Compared to 2007, overall consumer satisfaction increased by between 15% and 33% according to a survey conducted by Nielson on behalf of TRA in 2011.
There were about 1.7 million mobile subscribers in Bahrain at the end of 2011, representing a mobile penetration rate of 133%.
Domestic mobile originated traffic reached 3.7 billion minutes in 2010, an increase of 86% between 2009 and 2010. This represents in excess of 3 hours of communications per month per mobile.
Since the introduction of number portability in mid July 2011, about 22,000 numbers have been ported.
At the end of 2011, there were approximately 290,000 internet subscribers in Bahrain, all of whom were broadband subscribers, an increase of 42% between 2010 and 2011. About 45% of them had broadband speed above 1Mbps. In 2011 broadband penetration in Bahrain was 23%.
Fixed wireless and mobile broadband are becoming increasingly important ways to access the internet, together representing more than two-thirds of internet subscriptions by the end of 2010.
At the end of 2011, there were 126,000 mobile broadband subscribers.
By the end 2011, there were about 242,000 fixed lines in Bahrain, equating to a fixed line penetration of 19%.
The number of fixed PSTN lines declined by just over 7% between 2010 and 2011.
Fixed telephony traffic decreased by 10% between 2009 and 2010 due to increasing use of mobile.
International traffic grew by 35% between 2009 and 2010 and reached 2 billion minutes despite the increasing use of (free) internet calls.
During 2010, 80% of total international calls (minutes) were made to South Asian countries.
“The statistics provided in this report show the positive impact that the sector liberalization and the legal framework set up in 2002 has had on the performance of the sector,” TRA’s General Director Mohamed Hamad Bubashait, said.
“They also illustrate how TRA’s actions and decisions continue to support the Bahrain Economic Vision 2030. As mentioned in Economic Vision 2030. Increased productivity comes about much more naturally in a competitive environment, driving economic growth, profitability and wages,” he added.
“This report demonstrates that the steps taken by TRA to promote and safeguard competition have delivered benefits to consumers. This has had a big impact on the growth in revenue, employees, subscribers, and the number of minutes, as well as reductions in prices paid by subscribers”.
Since it was established in 2003, TRA has undertaken a wide range of activities to foster competition and to promote the interests of consumers.
TRA has also taken the initiative to clarify competition rules and was the first regulator in the region to publish competition guidelines. Competition has led to more choices and investment in new technologies (e.g. Wimax, high speed mobile broadband, NGN) and new innovative services (e.g. mobile broadband, VOIP). 2011 also saw the successful introduction of number portability which facilitates consumer switching.