Oman to open doors of telecom market wider

Muscat: The rapidly expanding telecom sector in Oman will be further liberalised, according to Mohammad Bin Nasser Al Khusaibi, Secretary-General of the Ministry of National Economy and Chairman of the Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (TRA).

Addressing the Majlis Ashura's seventh regular session of its first annual sitting on Sunday, Al Khusaibi said that setting up of TRA was part of a government initiative to liberalise and develop telecom sector in the country.

The penetration level of telecom sector in Oman is over 90 per cent with mobile telephone network service offered by two different operators.

"Counting all the telecom services available in the country, the penetration level is much above 90 per cent," claimed Ali Al Matani, spokesperson for Omantel.

He said that Oman Mobile's subscriber base was over 1.5 million while the other operator Nawras celebrated one million subscriber mark in last January. Thus combined both operators offer over 2.5 million GSM connections.

Talking about the liberalisation of the sector, Al Khusaibi said: "Since its establishment, the TRA has been implementing a strategic plan to liberalise the sector and introduce competition in a fair and transparent manner."

TRA first introduced competition in the mobile telecommunications sector by granting licence to Nawras in March 2005.

"The competition has yielded in providing customers with more options, novel services and packages, quality service and new job opportunities and low service tariffs," believes Al Khusaibi.