Bahrain TRA publishes the Development Review Panel 2006 Report

This report was submitted to the TRA by the Panel, after the Panel conducted its review of the regulatory state of affairs in the Kingdom of Bahrain.

The TRA Development Review Panel is a panel of independent experts, who have all built enviable reputations in the industry, both for their experience and their integrity.

The members of the Panel for 2006 were:
Professor Martin Cave, Director of the Centre for Management Under Regulation, of the Warwick Business School in the United Kingdom, who specialises in Regulatory Economics, particularly in the communications sector; Mr. Robert Bruce, Senior Research Fellow at the Center for Digital Strategies of the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth, United States of America, and Mr. Ian Martin, a banker and Senior Telecommunications Analyst at ABN Amro Bank in Australia.

The Panel report outlines the process implemented for information gathering and meetings, and highlights some of the main concerns that have arisen during these meetings. The report also discusses in detail the Panel's recommendations as to the areas that the TRA should be looking at as a matter of priority, as well as areas requiring further improvements. Among the main recommendations in the report was the need to make available access products and services to the new operators in the market including options for wireless connectivity such as WiMAX and Wifi and the possibility of implementing a fast track licensing scheme for these . The report discusses such recommendations in detail outlining the reasons behind them as well as the steps the TRA can take to make them happen.

The Chairman of the Panel, Professor Martin Cave, commented as follows on the publication of the report:

"Today we have submitted the Panel's report for the second year to the TRA. As last year, the report is based on our review of the TRA and the feedback that we received during our fact-finding visit to Bahrain, most notably the feedback from the public meeting of the Panel last February. The report provides our recommendations and findings in detail. We hope that it will be of benefit to the TRA as well as the telecommunications sector as a whole in Bahrain."

He added: "We would like to thank the TRA, and all those individuals and organizations from whom we sought help in preparing our report. I am looking forward to next year's review."

The General Director of the TRA, Mr. A. Andreas Avgousti, said: "As promised, we are publishing the full contents of the Panel's report. We would like to thank the Panel and all those who provided feedback to the Panel during their visit to Bahrain. This feedback and interaction is precisely what we had aimed for when establishing the Panel two years ago. We will be studying the Panel's report in detail, in order to identify the most appropriate ways of addressing the priorities recognized by the Panel in our Plan for the next 12 months. In addition, we will be issuing our formal response to the report in conjunction with our forward Plan, as last year. "