ICT
From The Report: Bahrain 2019
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Bahrain boasts one of the most-developed telecommunications markets in the region, and the authorities are planning for further infrastructure upgrades, including the rollout of an ultra-fast broadband network across the country. Work is under way to develop the kingdom as a regional ICT hub, with a particular focus on areas such as the cloud, e-commerce, gaming, cybersecurity and the local start-up scene. Such efforts have been bolstered by a recent surge in foreign investment into the ICT sector, led by a landmark investment by Amazon Web Services in 2017 in the cloud and data centre segment.

This chapter contains an interview with Mohammed Ali Al Qaed, Chief Executive, Information and eGovernment Authority.

Articles from this Chapter

Overview

Forging ahead: The kingdom nears its goal of becoming a regional ICT hub, bolstered by increased investment and robust national plans
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Bahrain boasts one of the best-developed telecommunications markets in the region, and the authorities are planning for further infrastructure upgrades, including the rollout of an ultra-fast broadband network across the country. Work is under way to develop the kingdom as a regional ICT hub, with a particular focus on areas such as the cloud, e-commerce, gaming, cybersecurity and the local start-up scene. Such efforts have been bolstered by a recent surge in foreign investment into the…

Interview

Embracing the future: Mohammed Ali Al Qaed, Chief Executive, Information and eGovernment Authority (iGA), on the dividends of digitisation
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Interview:Mohammed Ali Al Qaed What progress has the government made in digitalising the provision of public services? MOHAMMED AL QAED: Bahrain was the first country in the region to adopt public cloud services. This and other advancements are reflected in its ranking 26th worldwide, sixth in Asia and second in the GCC in the UN’s 2018 E-Government Development Index, which scored member states on ICT infrastructure, human capital and online public services. In the infrastructure index,…

Analysis

Gear up: The regulator and local operators prepare for the arrival of 5G
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In Bahrain, 4G mobile data services have been available since 2014, with operators having since upgraded to faster LTE-Advanced (LTE-A) networks. The kingdom is now working on the rollout of 5G networks, which will provide substantially faster download speeds and lower latency, allowing for the emergence of a range of new technologies based around machine-to-machine communication. Fifth Generation In theory, 5G mobile internet will offer consumers connection speeds of 20 Gbps, more than…