The Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (TRA) issued statistics on telecommunications equipment imported into the Kingdom of Bahrain within the 1st quarter of 2018. The total number of imported units through the first three months of the year reached 268,898 units. These units are subject to a set of technical and safety requirements as part of TRA’s regulatory process to ensure end users and consumer protection. The imported units are telecommunications devices that are part of or connected to a public telecommunications network. It is also worth noting that in 2017, the TRA has processed more than 1.5 million units. TRA’s electronic approval system, adopted in early 2016, has made processing telecoms equipment imports more efficient with overall requests taking less than 2 days.
Data showed that the volume of importing terminal equipment (cell phones, smartphones, fax machines, printers, scanners, tablets) in 2017 reached 1,286,476 units (85%). Passive Equipment (wires, fiber optics) reached 87,021 units (6%). The number of phone spare parts imported amounted to 139,257 units (9%).
“TRA’s regulatory process on importing telecommunications equipment into the Kingdom of Bahrain is aimed at controlling the importation of telecommunications equipment into the Kingdom through the necessity of acquiring prior approval on importing telecommunications equipment from TRA and the concerned entities. This will lead to ensuring safer public networks in the Kingdom, as some equipment may not meet emission safety standards, and may not be compatible with Bahrain’s telecoms networks, which may harm existing telecommunications networks and consumers if it is imported and used in the Kingdom of Bahrain.” Says TRA’s Technical & Operations Director, Eng. Mohammed Alnoaimi.