one ISP, two kingdoms
Bahrainis are a gouged, squeezed lot. I don't mean vanishing oil revenues, public land and seashore. I'm talking about the internet rates we pay for notre dame de telecommunications.
I fork BD 40 (US$ 106) each month for a supposedly broadband line of 256 kbps from Batelco. ( that's in a country where many earn less than BD 200 per month). But if I were living in Jordan, Batelco Jordan (a subsidiary of Batelco Bahrain) will offer me a 512 kbps internet for JD 23.9, or just BD 12.8 per month.
The ISP business is not labour intensive, so wages (which are slightly higher here) could not account for the difference. Nor is it a case of economy of scale (Batelco Jordan is still a minor player there). So, how can they explain the difference?
Here are the rates tables:
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And the one for Bahrain:
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source: www.batelco.com.bh
posted by MR @ 3:07 PM
4 comments
4 Comments:
wow, thats a big difference.
you should try sending this in to the GDN to see what excuses Batelco can come up to defend itself this time.
good one ;)
but does the Jordan service has as many glitches as its Bahraini counterpart ?
there doesnt seem to be a week without a technical problem ;)
Interesting!, but I have notice that the price for the same service (DSL) in our big brother (Saudi) and our cousin (Kuwait) is even higher than that !, there must be something with the Gulf stats that makes such service cost/price high , any guess ?
Sillybahraingirl, my cousin lives in UAE and apparently they have as much glitch as Batelco here and apparently things happened around the same time, so either those glitches are infectious or simply the whole gulf is linked to the Internet through one fat pipe :)
Chanad, do you think they (GDN, Batelco) care?
SBG, I doubt there's a place that could beat us on the glitches record.
Anonymous, UAE is certainly way cheaper. SA is in a different leaugue. They still have problems providing enough fixed lines tometroplitan areas, and their sheer geography. Kuwait DSL is almost the same as the one we have (KD 40), but that's for deeper Kuwaiti pockets. But, they have a dial-up service for KD 8, and that's for unlimited minutes.
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