Bahrain - Batelco fine for discrimination in tail circuits

Bahrain Telecommunications Company rejects TRA's fine

Bahrain Telecommunications Company (Batelco) has reacted strongly to the Telecommunication Regulatory Authority’s Section 35 Order and fine of BD100,000, imposed for an alleged failure to provide Customer Access Tail services to another licensed operator.

Batelco, in a statement to the media, said that the TRA’s grounds for the issuance of the order were not legally justified, based on the background circumstances of the matter and the relevant provisions of the Telecommunications Law.

Batelco charged that the TRA has behaved inappropriately by its involvement which disrupted a potential commercial business relationship between Batelco and the other licensed operator.

“We had informed the TRA well in advance of the reasons for such delays which included inaccurate and inadequate forecasting by the other operator in violation of specific processes under which Batelco has to comply with to provide such services,” the company said.

“According to Batelco’s Reference Offer to other OLO’s (other licensed operators), Batelco was not obliged to accept orders for such services in cases where capacity on its network was unavailable,” Peter Kaliaropoulos, Batelco Chief Executive, said.

“Delivering such services in the requested time frame would also have required Batelco to invest in its legacy network, a matter that Batelco was not obliged to do under the Telecommunications Law.”

“Batelco has invested $52 million in its new NGN (Next Generation Network) to deliver countrywide MPLS services in the Kingdom of Bahrain and believes that investment in its legacy network, which will no longer be required once the NGN is complete, is not a financially sound or viable option,” said Kaliaropoulos.

“We have brought forward our NGN rollout plan and will complete the full migration of services from Batelco’s legacy network to the NGN in 2008 and not 2010 as originally planned.”

“In view of this fact we explained to the TRA that Batelco could meet the full requirements of new services from operators at that time in three locations in the Kingdom. We also requested permission to enter into a commercial deal with the operator to resolve the problem in the interim and understood that the TRA had no issue with this,” he said.

“We believe that the TRA acted inappropriately by subsequently involving themselves in the commercial relationship between the operator and Batelco.”

“This is clearly discriminatory conduct by the TRA against Batelco’s commercial interests and has undermined Batelco’s capacity to strike a sound commercial agreement with the operator that would resolve all issues between them.”

“The imposition of such a fine of this magnitude is discriminatory and under such circumstances is disproportionate to the alleged breach of the Telecommunications Law, as claimed by the TRA,” he said.