TRA's New Rule: Oman Buildings Must Go Telecom-Ready

Every new building going up in Oman, whether it is a Muscat tower, a Sohar warehouse, or a Salalah villa, will soon need to be wired for telecom access from day one. On 30 August 2026, the Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (TRA) published a new regulation forcing developers to install shared, carrier-neutral telecom ducting before they can get a building completion certificate.

🔑 Key Takeaways

• The TRA has issued Decision 1152/2/36/2026-13, the "Regulation Governing the Implementation of Passive Infrastructure in Buildings and Real Estate Complexes," according to the official gazette listing on Decree.om.
• The rule applies to new commercial, industrial and residential buildings and real estate complexes, as well as renovations that alter more than 40% of a building's area or add a new floor, as reported by Al Roya.
• Developers must install ducts, cable routes and other passive infrastructure to TRA technical specifications, and obtain a completion certificate for internal telecom connections before the building itself can be certified, according to Muscat Daily.
• The infrastructure stays owned by whoever builds it, but every licensed telecom operator must be allowed to use it on fair, non-discriminatory terms, ending the practice of buildings being wired for a single carrier, as The Arabian Stories reported.
• Most provisions take effect six months after publication, though one clause, Article 2(3), has a three-year transition window, per Al Roya's report.
• The regulation is split into three parts covering definitions, internal passive network requirements, and administrative penalties for non-compliance.

📡 What the TRA Actually Changed

Until now, telecom wiring inside Omani buildings has largely been left to individual developers and, in practice, to whichever operator struck a deal with them first. That has meant tenants in some towers effectively had only one realistic choice of internet or mobile signal indoors, even in a market with multiple licensed operators competing for their business.

The new TRA regulation changes that by treating passive infrastructure, the ducts, risers, cable trays and connection points that carry telecom cabling, as shared utility infrastructure rather than a single operator's asset. According to Al Roya, the infrastructure remains legally owned by whoever builds it, but the owner must let every TRA-licensed operator connect to it and reach individual units.

Property owners can either build the infrastructure themselves to TRA specifications or contract a licensed operator to design, install and manage it, with cost-sharing arrangements possible between the parties, The Arabian Stories reported.

🏗️ Who Has to Comply, and When

The regulation covers new commercial, industrial and residential buildings, along with real estate complexes. It also captures major renovations, specifically projects that alter more than 40% of a building's floor area or add an additional storey, according to Al Roya's coverage. Buildings that already held a construction permit before the regulation's publication are exempt, giving projects already in the pipeline a clean pass.

Once a building falls under the rule, its owner cannot get a final building completion certificate without first securing a separate certificate confirming the internal telecom network has been completed by an authorised or licensed entity, as Muscat Daily noted. In effect, telecom readiness becomes a prerequisite for occupancy, not an afterthought bolted on once tenants move in.

Most of the regulation's provisions take effect six months after publication, giving developers, contractors and municipal permitting offices time to adjust design and inspection processes. One specific clause, Article 2(3), has a longer three-year runway, likely to account for infrastructure changes that are harder or costlier to retrofit into projects already under construction.

⚖️ Penalties and Enforcement

The regulation's third chapter is dedicated to administrative penalties for violations, according to Al Roya's summary of the text, though the specific fine amounts were not detailed in the public reporting reviewed for this article. Combined with the completion-certificate requirement, the practical enforcement mechanism is straightforward: buildings that skip the telecom wiring standard simply will not be able to open.

🇴🇲 Why This Fits Oman's Bigger Digital Push

On its own, a building-wiring standard is not glamorous. But it slots directly into a year in which Oman has repeatedly rewritten the rules governing its telecom and digital layer, from new number portability procedures to spam-call restrictions on operators, both issued by the same regulator in recent weeks. Passive infrastructure rules are the unglamorous plumbing beneath all of it: without shared, standardised ducting in buildings, the fibre and 5G rollouts that Oman's AI ambitions depend on are slower and more expensive to deliver to end users.

That matters for a country trying to position itself as a regional hub for sovereign AI and digital services. As Oman Vision 2040's tech agenda has consistently emphasised, reliable, competitively priced connectivity is a precondition for everything from AI startups to data centre operators choosing Oman over its neighbours. A market where new buildings are locked to a single operator undermines that pitch; open, multi-operator infrastructure supports it.

For real estate developers, the immediate impact is a new line item and a new inspection step in every project. For consumers and tenants, the long-term payoff is more choice of internet and mobile providers inside the buildings where they live and work, something that has not always been guaranteed under Oman's previous, more ad hoc wiring arrangements.

🎯 Why This Matters for Oman

Digital infrastructure regulation rarely makes headlines the way a new AI zone or a national language model does, but it is the layer that determines whether Oman's broader digital economy plans actually reach ordinary buildings and businesses. By making carrier-neutral wiring a condition of every new construction project, the TRA is quietly hard-wiring competition, and connectivity, into the built environment ahead of the fibre, 5G and eventual 6G capacity that Oman's Vision 2040 digital targets will require.