TRA Bahrain names external experts tasked with reevaluating unsuccessful bids for the National Fixed Wireless Services Licenses

The panel members are international experts with extensive knowledge and experience in the field of telecommunications and regulation. The experts (in alphabetical order) will be:

- Mr. Peter Alexiadis - a lawyer specializing in competition and communications law. He is a partner at the Brussels office of the law firm Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, and has served as an external counsel to the Communications Unit at DG Competition for three years (1999 - 2002).

- Mr. Nigel Attenborough- an economist specialsing in telecommunications. He is director at NERA Economic Consulting and in the past he was the head of regulatory economics and competition policy in British Telecom.

- Mr. Peter Walker - an engineer specializing in Telecommunications. He is an expert in regulation with over 34 years experience in the telecommunications industry among which he served ten years as the Director of Technology at Oftel/OFCOM .

As stated in the Invitation to Tender document issued by the TRA all submitted bids will enter a pre-qualification stage where they will be evaluated against the technical, legal and financial criteria published. Only bids that pass the pre-qualification stage will be eligible to participate in the actual auction.

The TRA has introduced to the evaluation process the additional safeguard of the expert panel that will reevaluate any bids that are not successful and present the TRA with its conclusions as to whether the TRA's assessment of the unsuccessful bids was appropriate. If the panel comes to the conclusion that a bid meets the qualification criteria, then the panel will advise the TRA of the same. It is worth noting that the ultimate decision of whether to include a bid in the list of successful bids remains with the TRA but unless exceptional reasons exist the TRA will be following the advice of the experts. If for any reason the advice of the experts is not followed the relevant party and the experts will be advised accordingly.

The Chairman of the Board of Directors and Acting General Director of the TRA, Dr. Mohammed J.K. Alghatam, commented as follows on the announcement of the panel:

"We are pleased to announce the names of the members of the Panel of Experts. They are all well respected experts in their areas of expertise and with a long track record in the Telecommunications industry. We welcome them to this important process, and we trust that their valuable contribution will positively influence the transparency of the forthcoming auction. "