**A step aimed at rolling out Batelco infrastructure in Key strategic new developments within the kingdom**

Batelco, the Kingdom’s leading integrated telecommunications service provider, has recently signed an agreement with Bahrain Bay Development which grants the operator a license to roll out its fiber access network within Bahrain Bay. This initiative is part of Batelco’s continuous efforts to make its fixed services available to customers located in the up and coming  new development areas.

Bahrain Bay is a fully masterplanned development, which will host a number of hotels, banks and high profile enterprise customers. In addition, the development is also planned to include various residential building projects.

With this in mind, Batelco is investing in the development of a state-of-the-art fibre optic network to ensure availability of its entire portfolio of enterprise and consumer products. This portfolio includes voice, private leased circuits, broadband and IPTV. Furthermore, the network will be designed to provide customers with fully redundant services to ensure business continuity, high service availability and uninterrupted services to the customers running crucial time sensitive operations.

“We are using the most advanced Gigabit Passive Optical Network (GPON) technology in designing the infrastructure that will serve the needs and requirements of customers in this newly developed area,” said   Batelco Bahrain Chief Executive Rashed Abdulla.

“Our investment in a GPON network will provide the platform necessary to support future ultra high bandwidth services which are expected to be introduced in the near future,” he elaborated.