TRA's General Director addresses the Strategic Telecoms Summit in Adu Dhabi

Delegates were drawn from operators, regulators, equipment suppliers and the financial community.

In his presentation, Mr. Horne talked about regulatory challenges imposed by convergence and migration to next generation network, new market such as VoIP, addressing the challenges of convergence, the future regulatory landscape and realization of tangible consumer benefits.

Bahrain was praised by representatives from the investment community as being an exemplar in providing the right signals to encourage investment, not only in ICT and Telecommunications, but in other industries which relied upon high quality communications links both within the region and internationally.

Separation of Policy from Regulation and from ownership in telecommunications and ICT was sighted where Bahrain was following international best practice, which was respected by the international banking and finance community.

TRA's General Director Alan Horne said that TRA had, after an extensive market review, set out a road map of regulatory measures to further enhance the environment to encourage investment in alternative telecommunications services.

The key measure of success he said was the ultimate end user experience.

TRA's key role is to ensure there is sustainable competitive supply of a wide range of innovative services.

Competition is the driving force for innovation. It was agreed that the public statement by Bahrain that Government is investigating the sale of a majority stake in Batelco was the right approach, particular if a strategic partner could be attracted which could bring to Batelco economies of scale and scope in a small market such as Bahrain.

Telecommunications is widely accepted as being an economic enabler and best practice clearly shows that it is the private sector that can best drive the provision of competitive supply of differentiated telecommunications services to end consumers.