The Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (TRA) has released its first quarter 2012 Broadband analysis report on the quality of fixed 2Mbps broadband residential services offered by licensed internet service providers (ISPs) in Bahrain.

Ghada Al Qassab, consumer affairs and media director, TRA, said: “TRA’s analysis report shows improvements in the service performance. The observed download average across the industry increased to 1.50 Mbps and this represents 75 per cent of the advertised speed by the ISPs. The upload speed also increased dramatically for ADSL packages, resulting in the industry upload average reaching 0.58 Mbps from 0.42 Mbps recorded over previous quarters.”

“Via this regular report TRA aims to enhance the awareness of consumers in Bahrain not only of the tariffs and the features of the services available in the market, but also of the actual observed performance and quality of these services,” he said.

Mohammed Tayeb Mahmood, technical and operations director, TRA, said: “Via this report, TRA is aiming to provide consumers with comparative data relating to the observed quality of service achieved by ISPs to allow consumers to make informed decisions when choosing a service provider.”

“It is not feasible for TRA to monitor all the available packages from all ISPs and therefore the choice has been made to focus on the 2 Mbps packages for ADSL, Fiber and WiMax Services from 2Connect, Batelco, Etisalcom, Kalaam, Lightspeed, NueTel, Menatelecom, and Zain.” – TradeArabia News Service