Iran’s Communications Regulatory Authority said on Saturday it has blocked over 357,000 cellphone numbers of advertisers from November 2017-21 for sending annoying spam texts.
CRA's website said the fight against unsolicited ad senders has intensified and 357,526 SIM cards have so far been blocked.
Officials at the oversight body believe that the battle against such ad senders is far from over, as new SIM cards and companies continue to launch such publicity campaigns, IRNA reported.
Peyman Qaredaghi, a deputy head at CRA, said the cost of sending mass advertisements through text messaging is still very low compared to other means of commercial promotion.
CRA aims to curb such advertisements by cracking down on firms using this indiscriminate mode of publicity. It has initiated legal actions against such companies and managed to reduce the number of such ads considerably.
"People can file complaints against such ad senders by simply forwarding their phone numbers through an automated system," he said.
“They can simply send the ad senders’ number to hotline 195 and the regulator will block the number after issuing a warning.”
Qaredaghi noted that the authority blocked nearly 3,000 numbers in the first week of launching the system in November 2017, but concerted efforts are required to verify and block them effectively.
Complaints in Detail
According to CRA, about 32,000 complaints against ad senders have been received since the beginning of the current year (March 21) up to Oct. 17, accounting for 31% of all cases registered with the authority.
Qaredaghi noted that the total number of complaints received by CRA has registered a 10% fall year-on-year.
Elaborating on the nature of most complaints during the period under review, the official said about 25% of all cases were about mobile network communication issues.
Some 18.2% of all complaints received by CRA concerned the quality of landline phone services.
Fixed Wireless Access data transfer was the subject of 1.3% of dissatisfied subscribers.
Qaredaghi said postal services had a 5.1% share and overcharging subscribers and FWA data transfer accounted for 1.3% of the total complaints.
Poor performance in the issuance of notices by network operators was the subject of 0.8% of dissatisfied subscribers, he added.
Different Needs
The official noted that detailed studies of the complaints show citizens in certain areas of the country face particular types of communication problems.
Qaredaghi said this indicates that people’s concerns differ, depending on their place of residence.
"For instance, people living in the border cities of western Iran are mostly concerned about mobile network and data roaming. This is while people in metropolises like Tehran, Yazd, Isfahan and Alborz care mostly about customer services and support," he said.
Qaredaghi urged major mobile operators to identify and remove shortcomings in their services to increase customer satisfaction.
The official pointed out that complaints over the quality of internet connection, both landline and mobile phones, have decreased compared to the year-ago period.
No data have been disclosed on the complaints filed in this category of ICT services.
ICT Infrastructure
According to the regulatory authority, development of telecommunication infrastructures in Iran has gained traction in recent years, as communication demand rises and the world goes digital.
CRA reports that mobile network penetration rate in the country reached 156.64% in the first half of the current fiscal year (March 21-Sept. 22). The total number of active SIM cards in the country reached 133.09 million on Sept. 22, up 0.96% from the first quarter (March 21-June 21) figure.
SIM cards are provided by three domestic mobile operators, namely Mobile Telecommunications Company of Iran (MCI, or Hamrah-e Avval in Persian), Irancell and RighTel.
The penetration rate of landline telephone services reached 34.82% by Sept. 22, with 29.25 million active subscribers.
The rate shows a slight improvement compared with last year’s 34.68%.
With the help of TCI and HiWEB operator companies, the number of villages with landline telephony infrastructure reached 51,400, which is 82.5% of Iran’s total rural areas.
The report also indicates that landline internet is expanding at a snail’s pace, mainly due to public discontent over their high rates and poor services.
According to CRA’s charts, the penetration rate of landline internet was only 12.69% by Sept. 22.
Landline internet speed for around 2 million subscribers did not exceed 20 Mb/s and 4 million had access to 2-10 Mb/s speed.
