Over the past few years, the Sultanate of Oman has proactively launched several digital transformation initiatives in a bid to improve overall government services. In addition, the Sultanate has made significant investments to modernise its digital infrastructure and applications and has been working on raising cyber awareness within the public sector to ensure the highest standards of cyber resilience.
It is within this context that Oman’s Telecommunication Regulatory Authority (TRA) launched a public consultation on the operations of data centres and cloud computing this week.
The consultation highlights the TRA’s intention to develop a cloud specific regulatory framework that:
- defines the rights and obligations of the providers and users of data centres and cloud computing services,
- mitigates the security risks associated with the increased use of cloud services,
- encourages investment in local data centres; and
- transforms the Sultanate into a hub for data centres and cloud computing.
In addition, the consultation seeks opinion on:
- the TRA’s intention to introduce a telecommunications ‘licence’ for the provision of cloud services in the Sultanate;
- conditions required to enable Open Access in data centres; and
- challenges impacting the uptake of cloud computing in the Sultanate.
The outcomes of the consultation is likely to have a significant impact on existing and new cloud service providers as the potential introduction of a cloud services licence will result in increased compliance costs and is likely to be associated with unfavourable conditions. Therefore, responding to the consultation and engaging the TRA is critical. Deadline for submissions is 15 March 2021.
Access Partnership is closely monitoring all developments regarding the TRA consultation. For more information regarding this matter or to get involved in the consultation, please contact Tamer Azab at tamer.azab@accesspartnership.com or Nada Ihab at nada.ihab@accesspartnership.com.
