A National Broadband Network (NBN) to be available on an open access basis, at fair and reasonable prices, is a new government initiative to help transform Bahrain into a knowledge society, Transportation and Telecommunications Minister Kamal Ahmed has said.
The NBN will involve the laying of fibre optic cable to all homes, schools and businesses, providing a country-wide high-speed broadband network within the next three to five years, he said on the sidelines of the sixth edition of the MEET ICT conference and BITEX exhibition.
“It is necessary to deliver the service flexibility, scalability and increased resilience enabling carriers to capitalise on increasingly bandwidth-intensive and complex applications in the kingdom,” the minister said.
“The NBN will also enable enhancement of widespread e-services starting with e-government, e-education, e-health, advanced e-business and e-banking.”
Mr Ahmed also said the fourth National Telecommunications Plan is to be published within the next few weeks.
The plan focuses on development of next-generation telecommunication infrastructure paving the way for the launch of 5G in the future.
Superfast 5G mobile services are believed to deliver speeds of one gigabyte per second.
Earlier, delivering the keynote at the opening of the conference, the minister said the ICT sector in Bahrain was of vital significance to the national economy.
He also inaugurated the BITEX exhibition, which has participants from Jordan, Lebanon, Oman, Egypt and Morocco.
The opening was attended by a number of experts and decision-makers in government and the private sector in Bahrain and the Gulf states and a number of countries including the US, China, Japan, India and others, as well as representatives from Batelco, VIVA Bahrain, Huawei and Microsoft and other partners.
BTECH chairman Ubaydli Ubaydli said the network will enhance broadband services in the kingdom significantly due to the advanced technologies to be used in implementing it.
Jointly organised by the Bahrain Technology Companies Society and Worksmart for Events Management, the three-day event is being held at the Gulf Hotel’s Gulf Convention Centre.
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Autor(en)/Author(s): Avinash Saxena
Quelle/Source: Gulf Digital News, 05.01.2016
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