TRA consults on its Draft Three-Year Work Plan

The Draft Plan has been prepared taking into consideration the feedback received during discussions with the Government, Licensees, potential licensees, consumer groups (both residential and business), and the telecommunications sector as a whole in order to determine priorities and thus develop TRA's detailed programme for 2007-2009. The plan will be reviewed at the end of each year and updated to reflect achievements as well as market changes.

The Draft Plan sets out the projects that TRA believes should be undertaken in the coming three years. The projects will aim to implement the vision to develop the Kingdom of Bahrain as the region's most modern communications hub. TRA's work plan aims to facilitate the development of the market by establishing the environment that enables sustainable competitive services, fostering competition where necessary, increasing consumer awareness, protecting basic rights of consumers, supporting the general governmental policies of national development, and further development of regulatory structures in order to reflect market and technological developments.

Among the projects listed in the Draft Plan is the review of licensing, spectrum management and type approval frameworks with a view to eliminate unnecessary red-tape. TRA wishes to enable licensees to offer customers the choice of innovative and competitively priced services, Other projects relate to a review of customer agreements and billing processes,. Additionally, TRA plans to conduct consumer awareness campaigns in order to increase the consumers' ability to make informed decisions in an increasingly competitive market.

In line with TRA's transparent approach and open dialog with all its stakeholders, TRA is consulting the public on this plan in order to gain assistance in setting out the telecommunications sector's priorities. TRA encourages detailed feedback on the Draft Plan, as this plan will form the route map of the telecommunications regulations for the coming years. TRA will be pleased to receive comments from all interested parties until 4 p.m. on 8 April 2007.

The General Director of TRA, Mr. Alan Horne, said: "This Work Plan has been produced following a series of meetings with TRA's stakeholders. The measures included in the working plan when implemented will give a strong impetus for the telecommunications sector in Bahrain to play a continuously leading role in the region and for delivering Bahraini consumers the state-of-the art information and communications services at affordable prices. However this will only be achieved through a very close co-operation of all the stakeholders. TRA continues to seek feedback on the priority that should be given to these projects as well as any other projects that our stakeholders think should be included in this plan. We strongly encourage all interested parties to comment on the Draft Plan, as their input will be valuable in preparing the final TRA work programme."