The Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (TRA) held an annual media meeting to review its achievements of 2022 and to discuss its upcoming plans.
Speaking on the achievements of the year 2022, Omar bin Hamdan al Ismaili, CEO of TRA, said that 12 regulations were issued this year to raise the quality of telecommunications services in the country.
On the issue of disruption in telecom services, Ismaili, said that this is due to damages related to undersea cables.
“We have to find alternative routes for these cables which require huge investment, apart from having regulations for the docking of ships.” He added that a price report for telecom companies' services will be published next week, which has been prepared by an independent body to achieve transparency, and for companies to look at prices in the Arab region.
TRA said that there is a programme to close 3G networks so that service providers can use 3G spectrum capacities for new technologies such as 4G and 5G.
It was revealed that nearly 80 per cent of buildings will be covered by fixed high-speed broadband, noting that over 600,000 buildings are covered by fiber services in 2022.
Around 51 per cent of buildings have been covered by fiber optic services and there are plans to cover 50,000 new buildings in 2023 with optical fiber networks”, he added. TRA has a target to cover 75 per cent of the buildings in the country with an optical fiber network by 2025.
According to TRA, the 5G and optic fiber services cover about 94 per cent of 880 schools.
TRA said that the most important regulation issued in 2022 was regarding voice or video communication services via the Internet Protocol.
The meeting said that the coverage of postal services in the country has reached 85 per cent and currently there are three international companies and 20 local companies operating in the country.
TRA said it has dealt with more than 30,000 inquiries through all platforms available to the beneficiary with a 20-second average waiting time at the call centre. An amount worth RO40,000 was refunded to beneficiaries, while 314 decisions were issued against telecommunications companies.