Lightspeed, the Bahrain telecommunications operator, has launched a range of new Internet services based on Livebox.

The Livebox is an all purpose communications hub allowing high-speed connection to the Internet, low-cost voice calls and Wi-Fi connectivity throughout the house or office.

It is available for the first time in the region through Lightspeed's partnership with Jordan Telecoms and France Telecom-Orange, which produce the Livebox.

More than five million Liveboxes are currently in operation across Europe, but Bahrain will be the first country in the GCC to offer the service with which it hopes to capture 20 per cent of the local market.

The new services offer a high-speed broadband Internet connection of up to two megabits per second and low-cost phone calls to local numbers as well as those in the GCC and the rest of the world.

"We are here to unveil a new range of products and services, which we feel will forever change the way Bahrain's residents communicate with one another," said Lightspeed chief executive officer Shaikh Abdullah Al Khalifa.

"People communicate in a whole range of different ways and having a choice in how you communicate is crucial. This is true both for businesses, which need to be flexible, and individuals, who want to communicate the way that's right for them.

"I think the products we have on offer are something you won't have seen before in Bahrain, and I can confidently predict that they will be very popular among a whole range of people and businesses in the kingdom."

For homes, connections come in two types - Premium, featuring unlimited free local landline calls and a two megabits connection and home featuring 10 hours of free local landline calls and speeds from 256Kbps to 1Mbps.

Companies and small businesses can choose from a range of unlimited usage packages from 256Kbps to 2Mbps bandwidth.

All subscriptions come with a free Livebox, which customers can use to connect their games consoles to the internet via Wi-Fi and make cheap voice calls through the Livebox's plug-and-play VoIP support.

The launch marks the conclusion of the one-week 'Do More' teaser campaign splashed across lamp posts and billboards throughout the kingdom.

This has now been replaced by a new series of advertisements under the 'Live More' slogan.

"We are launching a full set of new products aimed at both businesses and individuals in Bahrain," added deputy chief executive Nicolas Baudin.

"The core of these products is a high-speed connection to the Internet, using ADSL with a Livebox for homes and small businesses, and leased lines of varying capacity for enterprises and large organisations.

"This ADSL is offered at bandwidth levels - which are driven by the local infrastructure - of up to two megabits per second, with options for speeds of 256 and 512 kilobits per second and one megabit per second at varying price points.-TradeArabia News Service