Oman’s second national telecoms operator, Nawras, plans to invest USD389.6 million over the next two years in the expansion of fixed line services, which are slated for launch in the second half of 2010. CEO at Nawras, Ross Cormack, told Reuters that the funds will be ploughed into the deployment of the relevant infrastructure. The company has also announced it has embarked on a pre-registration campaign for its home broadband service based on WiMAX technology. Nawras, which has provided mobile services in the Sultanate since March 2005, is in the process of rolling out a 5,000km next generation network (NGN) across Oman, 1,500km of which has already been installed. At the same time, the company is constructing WiMAX base stations to take its high speed broadband service into homes and residences nationwide. It plans to offer fixed broadband services to more than 54% of the population at launch and hopes to increase the figure to 81% by mid-2011. Only one other company, incumbent state-owned telco Oman Telecommunications Company (Omantel), currently provides fixed line services in the Sultanate.
According to TeleGeography’s GlobalComms Database, Nawras is owned by Qatar Telecom (Qtel, 55%), Denmark’s TDC (15%) and several Omani investors (30%). The company received its licence to provide fixed, data and international telecoms services by Royal Decree 34/2009 in June 2009.