Bucharest, ROMANIA—HE Shaikh Mohammed bin Khalifa Al Khalifa, Ministry of Transport under-secretary and Batelco board director, signed a nearly 9.8 million dinar (US$26 million) contract with Ericsson to undertake the further expansion of Batelco’s GSM network capacity.
The mobile telephone market in Bahrain, in line with trends in numerous regions worldwide, is growing 10 times faster than fixed-line telephony. Last year, the growth in this market sector amounted to 54 per cent. At present, there are 283,000 mobile customers in Bahrain. This represents a market penetration of 41 percent, representing the second-highest mobile penetration in the Middle East.
Commenting on the proposed upgrade, Batelco’s Chief Executive Andrew Hearn said, “The mobile market is the primary area of focus for Batelco. In the relatively short period that mobile telephony has been available in Bahrain, its rapid spread and development is evidence of the importance the company attaches to this state-of-the-art technology and its deployment in Bahrain for the benefit of all our customers.”
The latest upgrade will extend the network capacity to accommodate 80,000 additional users, bringing the total number of user capacity to 400,000, while the SimSim connections will be similarly increased from 250,000 to 320,000.
In addition to expanding network capacity, the upgrade uses unstructured supplementary service data (USSD) technology for the introduction of new services, such as SimSim roaming, voucher refill, balance enquiry and balance notification.
The project includes the installation of two new gateway switching centers for mobiles and a base station controller followed by the addition of 15 new radio base stations, which will improve GSM performance mainly in Manama, Muharraq, Isa Town and Riffa. Also included in the scope of work is an upgrade to the GSM network software, which will enable Batelco to offer new services based on technologies such as General Packet Radio Service (GPRS) and third-generation (3G) services in the future.
The project will be rolled out in four phases, with the last phase to be completed by mid-2002. Batelco said it will take all steps to ensure that disruptions during the rollout period are kept to a minimum.
