Bahrain Mirror: Bahraini telecoms companies recently reduced the one year long validity for prepaid mobile phone packages by 73% to only 100 days validity for BD30.

The new regulations state that telecom companies can now only provide a maximum one hundred days validity for prepaid lines. Until now ‘Mobile credit transfer' service has been provided at mobile shops and cold stores throughout the kingdom which helped customers extend their telephone line validity for a year by paying, typically, just BD2.

Local newspaper Al-Ayam said that the new pricing system applied by companies was due to the continued decline in the companies' profits, in light of the fierce competition witnessed by the telecommunications sector throughout the past seven years with the emergence of a third operator.

According to the Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (TRA) data for the year 2016, prepaid mobile line subscribers constituted about 80%, i.e. 2.261 million subscribers, while postpaid subscribers constituted 20%, i.e. 565,000 subscribers.

The number of mobile phone line subscribers in Bahrain exceeded 2.8 million by the end of 2016, increasing by 11% compared to 2015, added the TRA.

Regarding the role of the TRA in implementing the new pricing mechanism for prepaid telecommunications packages, TRA Regulatory Affairs Director Saeed Mashkour confirmed that the TRA has not issued any guidelines on this matter. He pointed out that any changes in retail services in the mobile market are based on trade decisions made by mobile service providers, based on their competition and interaction with market dynamics.

Arabic Version