Bahrain has achieved full national 5G coverage, according to Bahrain’s Ministry of Transportation and Telecommunications, as two of three mobile operators have achieved full coverage to the country’s population, sparking a new wave of opportunities for streaming, gaming and supply chain technologies.
Bahrain has long been considered a strategic base for tech firms to launch data-driven services in the Gulf region, with Amazon Web Services launching the region’s first hyper-scale data centre in the Kingdom last year.
All of the Middle East nation’s 1.5 million population are now able to access the high-speed service, and investment experts hope that the roll-out will attract other heavyweight tech firms in the post-COVID era, as companies look to make full use of the wide promise of next generation technologies across a wide variety of applications.
Bahrain’s telecoms sector attracted some BHD 787 million in investments (more than 2 billion US dollars) between 2009 and 2019. In line with ambitious economic diversification efforts, the country’s ICT sector now accounts for nearly three per cent of national GDP.
Researchers estimate that there will be more than 1 billion 5G connections by 2023, and Bahrain’s nationwide roll-out places the country at the forefront of this global technological advancement for both B2B and B2C applications.
Bahrain was the first GCC member to open and liberalise its telecoms market, which remains one of the region’s only telecoms markets with no restrictions on VoIP services.
