Batelco
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Bahrain Telecommunications Company (Batelco) was established in 1991 as a Bahraini shareholding company and has an authorized share capital of BD 100 million (US$ 265 million). Batelco's major shareholders include the Government of Bahrain, Quasi-government institutions, financial and commercial organizations, and private Bahraini and GCC investors. All the pre-mentioned parties hold 80% of Batelco, while Cable and Wireless holds the remaining 20%.
Batelco’s employees reached around 1,500 of which 95% are nationals. The operator is very aware of its employees’ training and accordingly spent nearly BD 1.5 million (US$ 3.98 million) during 2003 in training its staff. Nearly BD 71 million (US$ 188.15 million) is injected into the national economy annually by way of salaries and local expenditure and investments paid by the operator. Batelco has allocated an amount of BD 42 million (US$ 111.3 million) for capital expenditure on network development and enhancement during the year 2002 to prepare for the migration to packet switching and ATM technologies that will support all the multimedia services. In June 2004, Batelco announced a further investment of BD 9 million (US$ 23.85 million) in the mobile network to expand its capacity to 550,000 lines.
Despite the full liberalization of Bahrain’s telecommunications market by the Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (TRA), Batelco is still the monopoly operator for fixed, Internet and datacomm services in the small but advanced gulf country. It is noteworthy, however, that four companies already have ISP licenses but are not operational at this moment. These are expected to be operational during 2005. Moreover, Batelco, through its holding company (Batelco Middle East EC (BMEC)) in Bahrain, have setup a number of communications partner companies acting as a spearhead for Cable and Wireless global datacomm strategy. These communications partner companies are found in several key areas of the region including Kuwait, Jordan, and Egypt. It is noteworthy that Batelco has sold its 50% share of the Datacomm provider, Batelco Al-Jeraisy (Atheer), in Saudi Arabia during the last quarter of 2004.
In May 2006 Batelco announced a change to the broadband packages, limiting downloads to only 15GB per month, whereas previously it was unlimited. This sparked a national movement to Boycott Batelco because of its monopolistic corporate practices.
[edit] Batelco's service portfolio
Batelco offers its subscribers a comprehensive portfolio of services. In addition to the basic telecommunications services, the operator was successful in launching the latest technologies coupled with the introduction of many new value-added services. Batelco currently offers the following services:
- PSTN services (including ISDN and ILD)
- Cellular GSM (prepaid and postpaid)
- Internet services
- Broadband services
- Datacomm services
- Payphone services
- Paging services
- Messaging services
- Broadcast
- Maritime
- PABX
- Facilities Management
- E-commerce
