Moving into a home in Muscat means opening two separate utility accounts with two separate companies, plus an internet contract with a third. The single most repeated error in guides to this is the claim that expatriates pay an unsubsidised electricity rate. They do not.
The electricity subsidy has nothing to do with your nationality
Omani residential electricity has two tariff bands, called the Basic Account Tariff and the Additional Account Tariff. Almost every guide describes these as a citizen rate and an expatriate rate. That is wrong, and Nama's own customer FAQ says so in plain terms.
The split is keyed to your identity document, not your passport. Nama's system automatically identifies the accounts linked to your Civil ID — and a resident number works the same way — and a maximum of two accounts receive the Basic Account Tariff. Every account beyond those two falls to the Additional Account Tariff. Nama's FAQ refers throughout to "citizen/resident" without distinguishing tariff access by citizenship. So an expatriate resident renting a flat in Al Ghubra pays the same 14, 18 and 32 baisa per kWh as an Omani neighbour on the same bracket. If you have been told to budget for an "expat electricity rate", you have been told something that is not true.
The Basic Account Tariff is capped at two accounts per Civil ID or resident number. It is not capped by nationality.
Where nationality genuinely bites is one layer higher up. The National Subsidy System provides a further citizens-only subsidy on top of the Basic tariff, and an eligible Omani may nominate one account for it. Expatriates get the Basic tariff but cannot access the National Subsidy layer.
Water is the opposite, and there the split is real
Having established that electricity does not discriminate by nationality, the honest next sentence is that water does. Nama Water Services publishes a tariff table that separates Citizen from Non-Citizen explicitly.
| Customer | Water, OMR per m³ | Wastewater, OMR per m³ |
|---|---|---|
| Citizen, first two accounts | 0.660 | 0.154 |
| Citizen, third account onward | 0.770 | 0.154 |
| Non-citizen resident | 0.770 | 0.154 |
| Commercial | 1.320 | 0.231 |
| Government | 1.320 | 0.193 |
An expatriate resident pays OMR 0.770 per cubic metre — the same as an Omani who already holds more than two accounts. An Omani citizen on a first or second account pays OMR 0.660. That is a genuine, published, nationality-based difference, and it is the mirror image of the electricity position.
The pattern we keep seeing is an article that invents a nationality split for electricity, where none exists, and then presents water as a flat rate, where a real split does exist.
If a guide tells you expatriates pay more for power and the same for water, it has the facts exactly backwards on both counts.
The Cost Reflective Tariff is not a household tariff
The Cost Reflective Tariff, or CRT, appears constantly in guides aimed at people moving into homes. It should not. Under the reporting of APSR Decision 44/2024, CRT applies to non-residential subscribers whose annual electricity consumption exceeds 100 MWh. It is priced as wholesale supply cost plus transmission cost plus distribution cost plus supply cost, and it is republished annually as a statement of charges. A tenant in a Muscat flat or villa will never be on it. If you are reading a household utilities guide that explains CRT bands to you, that guide has taken a large-consumer industrial mechanism and dropped it into domestic advice. Skip that section and check the residential brackets instead.
Who your electricity supplier actually is
Muscat Electricity Distribution Company no longer exists. In 2023 four companies — MEDC, Majan Electricity Company, Mazoon Electricity Company and Tanweer, the rural areas company — were merged into two national entities, which had commenced operations by 12 June 2023. For a Muscat address the two names that matter are:
- Nama Electricity Supply Company, trading as Nama Supply — this is your retail counterparty. It reads the meter, issues the bill and holds the supply agreement.
- Nama Electricity Distribution, trading as Nama Distribution — this is the wires company. It handles the physical connection and the new connection application.
Your account is with Nama Supply. Your connection is applied for through Nama Distribution. Both sit under Nama Group, alongside Nama Water Services, Oman Grid Company and Oman Power and Water Procurement. This matters because the dead name is still circulating. The guide that currently ranks at or near the top of most searches for Omani utilities still tells readers that "Muscat Electricity Distribution Company" operates in the capital. It has not done so since 2023.
The 2023 merger covered the whole Sultanate except Dhofar governorate, which remains served by Nama Dhofar Services. If you are moving to Salalah rather than Muscat, none of the Nama Supply and Nama Distribution process below is your process.
Opening the electricity account as a tenant
The step generic guides omit is the first one. To link a rented property to your name, Nama Supply requires a copy of the tenancy agreement approved by the municipality. A private contract signed between you and your landlord is not enough on its own. Municipality attestation of the tenancy is the gate everything else passes through. Nama Distribution's published document list for a new connection is short:
- Copy of the national ID
- Copy of the property ownership document and the survey drawing, the krooki
- The approval of the competent municipality
Document sets differ depending on whether you are an owner, a tenant, one of several owners, an inheritor, or in employer-provided housing — property deeds, krooki, tenancy agreement, ID copies and a power of attorney where one applies. Nama states that data updates are processed within a period not exceeding one month. Applications can be submitted through the company website, a Sanad centre, the phone application, or a customer service office. Nama Distribution names Sanad centres as an accepted channel in its own FAQ, which is worth knowing if the online route stalls.
The connection fee
The only published fee formula is load-based. Nama Distribution's worked example is a 65 kW residential connection charged as 65 × 5 = OMR 325, which is OMR 5 per kW of contracted load. There is no comprehensive published fee schedule beyond that example, so treat the formula as the reliable part and the total as something to confirm against your own load.
The residential electricity tariff
The current structure was issued by Decision 44/2024 of the Authority for Public Services Regulation, the regulation on the permitted tariff for electricity connection and supply, and took effect on 1 January 2025.
| Consumption bracket | Basic account | Additional account |
|---|---|---|
| 0 – 4,000 kWh | 14 baisa/kWh | 22 baisa/kWh |
| 4,001 – 6,000 kWh | 18 baisa/kWh | 26 baisa/kWh |
| Above 6,000 kWh | 32 baisa/kWh | 32 baisa/kWh |
Add 5% VAT. Note that the sources reporting Decision 44/2024 give the brackets without stating whether they are measured monthly or annually, and we could not open the APSR tariff page to confirm it, so we are not going to tell you which it is. Decision 44/2024 also allows subscribers to opt for an alternative structure, described as a fixed seasonal tariff for summer and winter based on load levels. No summer and winter figures for that elective option are published anywhere we could reach. The bracket table above is the default.
The summer 2026 reduction, and when it lapses
APSR reduced residential bills for May to August 2026. As this article is published the reduction is live, and it is about to end. The discounts apply to residential use on a single basic account only — not to additional accounts, not to commercial supply:
- 0 to 4,000 kWh — 15% off in May 2026, then 20% off from June to August 2026
- 4,001 to 6,000 kWh — 10% off in May 2026, then 15% off from June to August 2026
- Above 6,000 kWh — 5% off in May 2026, then 10% off from June to August 2026
APSR also directed licensed companies to refrain from disconnecting electricity during this period, and to offer instalment plans to subscribers with outstanding arrears.
The 20%, 15% and 10% reductions are a seasonal measure for June to August 2026. They stop at the end of this month.
If you are budgeting from a bill issued during the summer, you are budgeting from a discounted figure. Work from the undiscounted 14, 18 and 32 baisa brackets for anything beyond August.
Water, wastewater and sewerage
Water and wastewater are both supplied by Nama Water Services, formerly branded Diam and before that Oman Water and Wastewater Services Company. The old diam.om addresses no longer resolve; the live estate is nws.nama.om. Sewerage is not a separate company, but it is separately charged, and on two heads at once. Alongside the volumetric wastewater rate of OMR 0.154 per cubic metre in the table above, residential customers pay a flat monthly sewage fee of OMR 2.100. Commercial and government customers pay OMR 5.250 a month.
Connection is charged separately for each service. For a residential property, a new water connection of up to 500 m³ costs OMR 200 plus OMR 10 VAT, and a new wastewater connection costs OMR 200 plus OMR 10 VAT as well. Non-residential water connections rise to OMR 600 plus VAT up to 500 m³, OMR 950 plus VAT for 501 to 1,000 m³, and OMR 1,300 plus VAT above that; non-residential wastewater is charged at actual cost.
To open a water account you need ID copies, the property ownership document, the survey drawing and municipal approval for the water connection. Nama Water Services states that only one connection is allowed for any single property, premise or building. Meters are read every 30 days by contractors, currently OIFC or ONEIC.
Electricity is billed by Nama Supply. Water and sewerage are billed by Nama Water Services. They are separate legal entities with separate accounts, separate applications and separate bills.
Any guide describing a single combined utility bill for an Omani address is describing a different country. Several of the top search results for "Gulf utility connection" are about Dubai, Abu Dhabi or Sharjah, where the arrangements are genuinely different — those are not transferable here.
Internet: who can actually serve your building
The regulator is the Telecommunications Regulatory Authority, tra.gov.om. We were unable to retrieve anything from it — the site rejects automated requests — so we cannot tell you what it currently publishes on service quality or complaints, and we are not going to guess.
The fibre in the ground is not owned by the operator you buy from. Fibre infrastructure in Muscat is built and operated by Oman Broadband Company, and the retail operators resell access over it. Fibre-to-the-home is reported as available across most residential areas of Muscat, with Al Mouj, Qurum and Ghala named specifically. No operator publishes a neighbourhood-by-neighbourhood coverage list we could find, so check your exact address on each operator's site rather than trusting a general statement about Muscat.
These are the operators' own published entry-level home fibre plans, taken from their websites on 7 August 2026. Telecom pricing moves frequently and promotional tiers come and go, so treat these as a snapshot rather than a rate card.
| Operator | Entry fibre plan | Installation |
|---|---|---|
| Omantel Baiti | OMR 25 for 100 Mbps | OMR 15 |
| Ooredoo | OMR 26 for 100 Mbps, plus 5% VAT | OMR 10 |
| Awasr Fibernet | OMR 27 for 300 Mbps down, 40 Mbps up | OMR 15 on 12 months, OMR 10 on 24 |
Read Ooredoo's full table before you choose a tier, because the pricing is not monotonic. On the list we read, 350 Mbps costs OMR 35 while 400 Mbps costs OMR 28, and 600 Mbps costs OMR 45 while 800 Mbps costs OMR 35. Promotional tiers sit alongside list tiers, so the cheapest headline is not always the slowest plan and the fastest plan is not always the most expensive. Awasr is the only one of the three publishing upload speeds against every tier, which is the number that matters if you work from home or push video. Its range runs from 300 Mbps down and 40 up at OMR 27 to 1.5 Gbps down and 200 up at OMR 45, with a 10 Gbps symmetric-ish tier at OMR 500.
The practical fibre-versus-5G question is not speed, it is time. Fibre requires your building to be on the Oman Broadband network and requires an installation visit, reported at one to two weeks from order, and no operator publishes a service-level commitment on that. 5G home broadband is plug and play — Omantel's Baiti 5G ships the modem free on postpaid plans with a two-year contract, and its prepaid Hayyak Baiti 5G costs OMR 60 upfront for the indoor modem. If you have just landed and cannot wait for an appointment, that is the difference that matters.
On documents, be careful what you believe. No operator page we read publishes a document list for a home internet subscription. The only first-party signal is Omantel's eligibility line for prepaid Hayyak Baiti 5G, which restricts it to residents and holders of a GCC passport or ID card. In practice a resident card and the tenancy contract for the service address is the working set, but we are describing common practice, not a published rule, and we would rather say so than dress it up.
What no official source publishes
These are findings, not omissions from our research. We went looking for each of them on the utilities' own sites and on the regulator's, and they are not there.
- No security deposit figure for electricity, anywhere. Not on Nama Supply, not on Nama Distribution, not in the Nama account terms, not on APSR. Neither the amount nor whether a deposit is charged at all is published.
- No security deposit figure for water on the Nama Water Services tariffs and fees page or its FAQ.
- No connection timescale for electricity. Nama Distribution publishes no service-level target for how long a new connection takes.
- No complete electricity connection fee schedule beyond the OMR 5 per kW worked example.
- No account closure, final bill or deposit refund procedure for electricity on any Nama page.
- No summer and winter rates for the elective seasonal residential tariff, despite Decision 44/2024 offering it as an option.
We searched specifically for an Omani electricity security deposit and got back results from India, Malaysia, Singapore, the United States and a UAE page listing utility deposits by emirate. Nothing Omani.
The UAE deposit model is well documented and widely copied. It has no verified Omani counterpart that we could locate. Do not plan around a deposit figure you cannot trace to Nama.
Moving out
For water, Nama Water Services publishes the procedure: terminating the contract requires a written request plus a meter reading to calculate the final charges, and outstanding amounts are to be settled without delay. For electricity, there is no published closure or refund procedure at all, which means the realistic advice is to contact Nama Supply directly and get the final reading recorded before you hand back the keys.
One claim to treat with suspicion: we found no source supporting the idea that an unpaid utility bill blocks a visa renewal, an exit, or any ROP transaction. The only enforcement lever we could verify is disconnection of supply — and even that is currently suspended for residential customers under APSR's direction for May to August 2026. If someone tells you an unpaid Nama bill will stop you leaving the country, ask them for the rule.
Do expats pay more for electricity in Oman than Omanis?
Who supplies electricity in Muscat now that MEDC has gone?
What documents does a tenant need to open an electricity account in Oman?
How much is the security deposit for electricity or water in Oman?
Are water and electricity billed together in Oman?
Does the Cost Reflective Tariff apply to my home in Muscat?
If the municipality attestation on your tenancy contract is the step holding everything else up, that is paperwork our office in Al Ghubra deals with routinely, and Nama Distribution accepts new connection applications through Sanad centres.