Nawras starts pre-registration campaign for its home broadband service in Oman

The pre-registration campaign will also reward "first-mover" customers with all the latest information on the Nawras products and updates on when the products are scheduled to be rolled out, allowing them to be the first to get the service. Registration can be done online or at any one of the 23 Nawras stores across the country leading up to the launch of fixed Home Broadband services.

In addition to honouring valued customers, Nawras has said that pre-registration will also be a chance to obtain important feedback from different communities, ensuring that broadband services are meeting the changing needs of individual customers.

The massive roll-out of Nawras' fixed service network will see nationwide broadband coverage reach more than 50% of families by June 2010. By the middle of 2011, the Nawras broadband network coverage will reach more than 80% of families. Ross Cormack, Nawras CEO, commented, "Our network will play a vital role in giving people the opportunity to benefit from home broadband, with less than 10% of households currently having a broadband service."

Described as a Plug 'n' Play solution, the Home Broadband service based on WiMAX technology will allow customers to enjoy a new level of simplicity and accessibility to high-speed internet. Customers can simply walk into any Nawras store, buy a box with a modem, take it home and connect it with their laptop or computer and start surfing.

"We are committed to enriching the lives of our customers by making access to technology easier and more versatile, creating a customer experience that is pleasingly different," says Cormack. "We are ultimately providing much more than a bouquet of telecom products; we are giving people the highest levels of user-friendly technology."

Launching the fixed telecommunications network marks another significant contribution to the development of the nation's infrastructure and Nawras' expansion as a full service provider - offering customers a one stop shop to meet all their telecom needs. According to Khalid bin Ibrahim Al Mahmoud, Nawras COO, the company now has the opportunity to advance the broadband internet market on a scale even greater than seen before in Oman's mobile industry. "Although the telecom market has grown tremendously in the last five years, this is just the beginning of a new era in digital innovation," comments Al Mahmoud.

Receiving a First Class Licence for the installation and operation of fixed telecom services last June, Nawras has spent the last year establishing a combination of state of the art fibre-optic and WiMAX technologies throughout the Sultanate, in line with His Majesty's vision for Oman's 2020 economic development. The next generation network being built by Nawras has seen nearly 2000 kilometres of fibre-optic cables successfully laid throughout the country with almost 10 kilometres of cables now going into the ground each day. Earlier this year, Nawras also entered into a landmark project with the TATA Global Network (TGN) as the exclusive landing party in Oman for one of the most advanced and largest submarine cable networks in the world.