Report Summary

Bahrain’s mobile market continues to produce remarkable rates of growth, in spite of the regulator’s recent insistence that operators count only active subscribers within their reported customer totals. By the end of 2007, the number of mobile subscribers in Bahrain had increased to 1.116mn, a figure which equates to a penetration rate of nearly 138%. Growth in the final quarter of the year was stronger than in all three previous quarters combined. The number of mobile customers saw a 15.7% surge in Q407, with growth being mainly driven by Zain’s expanding prepaid customer base. Zain’s prepaid customer base grew by 47.4% in Q407, compared with a mere 3.1% increase in the number of Bahrain Telecommunication Company (Batelco) prepaid customers. Despite the already highly saturated nature of Bahrain’s mobile market, announced in April 2008, it was reported that the country’s Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (TRA) had invited telecoms industry players and interested parties to express interest and opinions on the planned award of a third mobile network operating licence. The regulator has asked potential applicants to give opinions regarding preferred spectrum bands and size of frequency blocks to be assigned, plus related issues including infrastructure sharing, national roaming and length of shared exclusivity period. The TRA has indicated that a licence could be awarded by the end of 2008, with a new operator expected to launch services within 12 months of winning a concession. The possible arrival of a third mobile operator is expected to put considerable pressure on the sector’s existing mobile operators, particularly in terms of pricing. We also expect the arrival of a third operator to result in increased efforts by the existing players on increasing their ratio of postpaid customers relative to prepaid ones; such a move would help to keep ARPU levels buoyant. Even with the possibility that a third mobile operator may be licensed, we continue to predict that new customer growth, over the next five years, will slow down significantly. Further growth will, however, be sustained by Bahrain’s growing population and by considerable scope for increased growth within the contract sector. We now predict that Bahrain’s mobile penetration rate has the potential to reach 164% by 2012, a penetration rate which is already being reached in some European countries and in other parts of the Middle East. In separate news, reported in February 2008, it was revealed that Bahrain's government planned to sell the majority of its shares in fixed-line incumbent Batelco over the next three years, as part of the country's Second National Telecommunication Plan approved by parliament earlier in the same month. The planned sale is aimed at enabling the full-service telecom company to operate with full independence from the government and make commercial decisions free of political influence.