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Home > Communications > Telecommunications > General Telecom
Bahrain Telecommunications Report Q4 2008
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In the first three months of 2008, Bahrain’s mobile market saw the addition of a further 117,000 mobilecustomers, which pushed the country’s mobile penetration rate to over 151%. With quarterly growthamounting to 10.5%, Bahrain’s mobile market continues to surpass expectations. Mobile growth in Q108was more than double the 4% growth recorded in the first quarter of 2007. Based on current growthtrends, it looked as though Bahrain’s mobile market was set to have already exceeded our predictions forthe number of mobile customers at the end of 2008 sometime in Q208. We have therefore revised ourgrowth projections for the sector and now predict that the number of mobile customers will increase byover 26% in 2008 to surpass 1.4mn at the end of the year. Meanwhile, based on new figures published byBahrain’s regulator, the Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (TRA), we now estimate that therewere around 9,000 active 3G users at the end of 2007, representing 0.8% of the entire mobile market.
Although this figure is smaller than our previous estimate, we expect growth to be strong and predict thatthe number of 3G users will increase to around 21,000 at the end of 2009 and 175,000 at the end of 2012.In May 2008, the government of Bahrain revealed that it would reduce its stake in national incumbentoperator, Batelco, to below 50%, as part of a plan to sell domestic assets and diversify abroad. Talal al-Zain, the CEO of state investment vehicle, Bahrain Mumtalakat Holding Co., which has stakes in 34companies, stated that Mumtalakat planned to reduce its Bahraini holdings via options including initialpublic offerings (IPOs) that could be held within the next twelve months. The company is currentlyvalued at around BHD1.2bn (US$3.2bn) based on its traded share price, but it is likely to attract highervalue bids from major foreign telecoms operators.
Also in May 2008, it was reported that the TRA had invited foreign consultancies to submit proposals formanaging the selection of a third mobile network operator in the country. The move followed aninvitation issued in April 2008, by which the TRA encouraged telecoms companies and other interestedparties to express their potential interest and opinions on the planned award of a third mobile network.The TRA noted that, since the publication of its April invitation, six potential applicants had madeinformal approaches, although it did not name the companies. The TRA plans to launch a formal tenderfor the concession by mid-August 2008, delayed to mid-September, with submissions to be closed by theend of October. The industry watchdog is targeting early December as the date for announcing thewinner.
In our previous update, Bahrain sat in first place in our Business Environment Rankings for the MiddleEast. In our latest update, however, the country has dropped by three places and now sits in fourthposition behind Israel, Saudi Arabia and Qatar. Bahrain has seen its own score fall, mainly as a result of alower ranking in the telecoms market category; this reflects the impact which an expanding prepaid sectoris having on ARPU levels.
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