Bahrain Completes Preparations to Launch 5G Network

A display of smartphones at last year's Mobile World Congress. AFP file photo
A display of smartphones at last year's Mobile World Congress. AFP file photo
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Bahrain Completes Preparations to Launch 5G Network

A display of smartphones at last year's Mobile World Congress. AFP file photo
A display of smartphones at last year's Mobile World Congress. AFP file photo

Bahrain announced that it has completed preparations to launch 5G mobile networks, putting it on track to be one of the first countries in providing commercial 5G services to consumers by the end of 2019 once devices are made available.

Transportation and Telecommunications Minister Kamal bin Ahmed Mohammed has announced that the Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (TRA) is scheduled to allocate licensing and spectrum by the first week of April.

Mobile operators in Bahrain have started rolling out the necessary network infrastructure, said the minister, adding that commercial services will become available by June.

The Minister admitted the project faced a lot of challenges, namely the method of ensuring spectrum's availability, but overcoming these obstacles was possible due to the efforts of “Team Bahrain” that includes elite representatives from both the public and private sectors.

This “demonstrates how Bahrain can make a swift progress … in partnership with technology pioneers in the world.”

With the new 5G technology, users will be able to transfer bigger volume of data at higher speeds, which in turn, enables the development and implementation of technologies required for autonomous driving vehicles that need up to 100Gb of data per second to operate, explained the Minister.

This places Bahrain among the world’s leading countries in adopting the 5G technology and makes the Kingdom more appealing for companies that use the next-generation technologies such as autonomous vehicles and VR.

In June 2018, Bahrain held several successful commercial trials for 5G technology and all licensed operators are preparing to provide commercial 5G services.

The products and services will allow Bahraini companies to tap into the global 5G services market, which is anticipated to grow from an estimated $60 billion in 2020 to an estimated $125 billion in 2025.

The Kingdom’s ranking is high in global ICT indices, being the first in the Arab region on the ICT Development Index (IDI) of UN’s International Telecommunication Union (ITU), and ranking 4th globally in the UN’s Telecommunications Infrastructure Index (TII) of the E-Government Development Index (EGDI) in 2018.



Egypt, Cyprus Sign Gas Export Deals, Boosting Eastern Mediterranean Energy Cooperation

The logo of Italian energy company Eni is seen at a gas station in Rome, Italy August 16, 2018. (Reuters)
The logo of Italian energy company Eni is seen at a gas station in Rome, Italy August 16, 2018. (Reuters)
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Egypt, Cyprus Sign Gas Export Deals, Boosting Eastern Mediterranean Energy Cooperation

The logo of Italian energy company Eni is seen at a gas station in Rome, Italy August 16, 2018. (Reuters)
The logo of Italian energy company Eni is seen at a gas station in Rome, Italy August 16, 2018. (Reuters)

Egypt and Cyprus signed agreements on Monday enabling the export of gas from Cyprus's offshore fields to Egypt for liquefaction and re-export to Europe, as both countries seek to bolster the Eastern Mediterranean's role as an energy hub.

The deals signed at the 2025 Egypt Energy Show formalize a long-anticipated plan to link Cypriot reserves to Egypt’s liquefied natural gas (LNG) facilities, a move that leverages Egypt’s existing infrastructure to process and ship natural gas to European markets.

Monday's agreements involve gas extracted from one Cypriot site, Cronos Block 6 - now under license to a consortium of Italy's Eni and France's Total - to be processed at Egypt's Zohr facilities before being liquefied at Damietta and exported to Europe.

A second memorandum of understanding outlines a framework of processing gas from Cyprus' offshore Aphrodite field, under license to a Chevron-led consortium, which will also be sent to Egypt for processing.

The east Mediterranean has yielded some major gas discoveries in recent years, while a disruption in energy supplies from Russia after its invasion of Ukraine in 2022 has sharpened Europe's attention on securing supplies elsewhere.

"The essence of these agreements is not limited to promoting the exploitation of deposits, but broadens the prospects for energy cooperation with Egypt, while contributing to regional stability and strengthening our country's geopolitical position in the Eastern Mediterranean," a statement from Cyprus's Presidency said.

Cypriot officials have previously said they expect gas from Block 6 Cronos to possibly come online in 2026 or 2027. Cronos gas in place is estimated at more than 3 trillion cubic feet (tcf).

Aphrodite holds an estimated 3.5 tcf of gas. Israel's NewMed, a member of the consortium, expects gas to come online in 2031, it said in a stock exchange filing on Sunday.

In a Monday filing update, it said the "non-binding" MoU envisaged that Egypt's national gas company, EGAS, would be the sole buyer of the gas produced from Aphrodite, while the partners would be granted an option to purchase specific quantities of the gas sold to EGAS as LNG.

The signing of the Aphrodite deal follows a recent breakthrough between Cyprus and the Chevron-led consortium after months of disagreement over a development plan.

The agreement provides a boost for Egypt, which has struggled with declining domestic gas production and last year returned to being a net importer of natural gas.

Egypt recently signed $3 billion worth of LNG supply deals with Shell and TotalEnergies to cover domestic demand for 2025.

Egyptian Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouly has emphasized the country's need to ramp up production at its own Zohr gas field, where operator Eni has resumed drilling after output dropped to 1.9 billion cubic feet per day in early 2024.