Batelco Group continues to maintain its position of a leader of the telecom market in Bahrain in the first half of 2012.

"While tough competition continues, Batelco successfully remains the leader across the full spectrum of telecommunications services in the Kingdom of Bahrain. Providing value, innovation and exemplary customer care continues to place Batelco at the forefront for high value residential and enterprise customers," explained Shaikh Mohamed.

At the end of the first half of the year, Batelco continued to maintain a strong share of the mobile market in the Kingdom. Whilst subscriber numbers decreased minimally when compared to the previous year period, the operation witnessed 74% year-on-year growth in mobile data subscribers.

"We have continued to work hard to retain our high value residential and business mobile, data and broadband customers and are pleased with the results our efforts have yielded over the past six months. We are especially pleased to see customers utilising our value added services as evidenced by the growth of mobile data subscribers across the Kingdom during the period. This is an area of focus and expected growth for us and we will continue to look for ways to both expand and enhance the user experience for our customers," said Shaikh Mohammed.

The Group reported strong ongoing growth in its wireless broadband subscriber base – an area in which the company has continued to make ongoing enhancements. Batelco registered an impressive 74% growth in its wireless broadband subscriber numbers when compared to the first six months of 2011 and a 44% increase since the start of this year.

Looking at fixed services, fixed broadband subscriber numbers declined by 3% quarter over quarter, as a natural result of migration to wireless broadband services. Similarly, fixed to mobile migration - a global trend - also saw a decline of 2% since last quarter and 7% year over year for fixed line usage in the Kingdom.

"During the first half of the year, continued innovation and enhancements were achieved. This extends from the range and quality of our services to the care we give to our customers across the Kingdom. Innovation is at the heart of what we do and our ability to maintain our subscriber base. The first and second quarters of 2012 saw some exciting initiatives rolled out," added Shaikh Mohamed.

Important among these were efforts to ensure that Bahrain residents remain among the best conncected subscribers in the region. To this end, Batelco signed an agreement with Gulf Bridge International (GBI), the Middle East's first privately owned fibre optic cable operator, to connect Bahrain through International Capacity on GBI's new cable system. Batelco is the landing partner in Bahrain for the new cable system. The multi-million dollar deal provides Bahrain with better connectivity to the rest of the world and ensures that sufficient capacity is available to cater to expected future growth in data connectivity in line with the Kingdom of Bahrain's 2030 vision.

Other initiatives to enhance connectivity included additional partnership agreements with key regional players. The company signed a Memorandum of Understand with Qtel, Qatar's leading telecommunications provider, which will expand collaboration between the two providers in areas covering products and services including voice, internet, data, facility management and mobile, benefiting local and international business based in both Bahrain and Qatar. Similarly Batelco signed an agreement with Omantel allowing bi-lateral Data IP Services to be sold between Bahrain and Oman, as well as providing a one-stop-shop for transit services to Batelco's and Omantel's carrier partners, enabling both parties to extend corporate VPN solutions between their respective markets.

Batelco also signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Gulf Air, the Kingdom's national carrier. This represented a first step of a major collaboration that will see both Batelco and Gulf Air extend benefits to their respective customers to enhance their telecommunications and travel experience.

A key part of Batelco's focus during the period also remained on the continued introduction of new service upgrades, offers and promotions both for postpaid and prepaid mobile and broadband subscribers. During the second quarter, the company ran a well received summer challenge which saw 60 lucky customers win cash prizes totalling $115,500. Batelco also introduced a number of new value enhanced packages featuring such benefits as unlimited Data bundled with the latest smart phones. Offers were also launched for fixed broadband customers to deliver higher download speeds, higher throttled speeds and higher usage limits at no extra costs.