**First Win for Batelco and Bahrain in Major Contest**

Batelco, Bahrain’s leading business communications solutions provider is proud to announce that one of its Networking Academy representatives has won the top prize in the Middle East, North Africa, Turkey and Pakistan division of the 2014 EMEA (Europe, Middle East, Africa) CCNA Netriders competition. This is the first time that a representative from Bahrain has won the top award at the annual CCNA (Cisco Certified Network Associate) regional Netriders contest.

A number of Batelco’s Networking Academy employees participated in a National competition held for all of Bahrain’s Networking Academies in May, with three of Batelco’s entrants, Nawaf Zaghmout, Eshan Fathi and Ahmed Alasfoor winning the first three top spots in the Kingdom, giving them automatic entry into the regional competition. Nawaf walked away with the top regional prize.

The regional final competition, which was completed online by all entrants simultaneously, included the winners from Algeria, Bahrain, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Levant/UNRWA, Morocco, Oman, Pakistan, Palestinian Territory, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, Turkey and United Arab Emirates. All were vying for the top prize of a study trip to Cisco Headquarters in the Silicon Valley in California, USA in January 2015.

Batelco General Manager HR & Corporate Services Suhaila Alnowakhda offered her congratulations to Batelco’s participants for winning the top three slots from all entrants in the Kingdom of Bahrain and especially to Nawaf for his tremendous hard work that attained him the top regional prize.

“Our three participants all finished within the top 20 from around 50 regional winners, so we are naturally delighted with their efforts. This international success makes us very proud and confirms our Cisco Academy, located at our Training Centre in Hamala, as the leader in the Kingdom for the CCNA qualification.”

Batelco’s Cisco Networking Academy conducts the CCNA Routing & Switching training course, which takes 6 months to complete, for between fifteen and thirty candidates every year. The certification programme in foundational networking knowledge is designed for Network Specialists, Network Administrators and Network Support Engineers with 1-3 years of experience. The CCNA Routing and Switching validates the ability to install, configure, operate, and troubleshoot medium-size routed and switched networks.