Bahrain’s Telecommunication Regulatory Authority (TRA) has studied a new telecommunications interconnection model that aims at enabling operators to reduce costs and offer lower tariffs to end consumers, it was announced.

The national telecoms regulator said it is hosting a workshop today (December 11) to present the results of the study to better understand the uptake of Internet Protocol Exchange (IPX) and its benefits to the region, reported the Gulf Daily News (GDN), our sister publication.

The workshop will discuss how local operators in Bahrain and in the region may deploy the technology leveraging their existing investments to lower their operational costs, and deliver higher quality in services such as data roaming.

IPX is an interoperability service that enables fixed, mobile, legacy and next-generation networks to interconnect seamlessly.

The TRA said due to the rapid transformation in the global telecommunications industry, traditional telecom operators are required to rethink their existing business models to secure new revenue streams.

To cope with 'Big Data' and continuous changing consumer behaviour patterns, operators are forced to rapidly transform and implement new technical concepts whilst leveraging existing technologies and sunk investment, it added.

They are also required to seek innovative ways to reduce operational costs, which will enable the provision of cost-effective services.

Undergoing such transformation, the telecom industry started using IPX as a telecommunications interconnection model for the exchange of IP traffic between mobile and fixed operators as well as other types of services (such as Internet).

This, it is believed, helps operators to provide secure, high quality services in a way that minimises the cost and technical burden of protocol conversion. - TradeArabia News Service