COVID-19: What the Communications Regulatory Authority (CRA), Qatar, is doing to help

The Communications Regulatory Authority (CRA) is Qatar’s communications regulator, overseeing the telecoms and Information Technology sectors, as well as the postal sector and access to digital media.

Actions taken by the CRA to help during the COVID-19 pandemic include:

• Working with Ooredoo Qatar, Vodafone Qatar and Microsoft to provide offers and packages for telecom services to help people work from home easily and securely.
• Establishing priorities for the telecoms sector, including ensuring network stability and resilience to cope with additional traffic without affecting service quality to end users.
• Ensuring that workers use preventative measures to stay healthy and ensure business continuity.
• Requesting that Ooredoo Qatar and Vodafone Qatar offer promotional packages to help their customers with their communications needs during the crisis.
  • The operators have also increased internet speeds (doubling them) and doubled mobile data allowances for both business and residential customers, free of charge. Connection fees and new, affordable, mobile broadband services have also been produced to support customers working in strategic sectors or sectors which have been negatively impacted financially by the outbreak.
  • Mobile operators have also supported government units by providing additional data and/or voice minutes, and have provided unlimited support for the health and education sectors by increasing internet capacity to meet their current needs.
• Facilitating the remote operation of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) by providing free access to cloud collaboration tools from Microsoft, which has launched an initiative to provide a number of free services within the country. This includes a customised version of its Office 365 product, as well as voice and video conference calling capabilities.
  • The CRA is undertaking an outreach campaign in partnership with the Ministry of Commerce and Industry to target SMEs with information about how they can benefit from these free services.

To find out more about what the CRA is doing to help click here.