A review of the latest statistics in the field of information technology shows that the penetration rate of fixed and mobile broadband in Iran has reached 122%.
With the development of communication infrastructure and the change in people’s lifestyle due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the use of mobile phones has increased, especially in the past two years.
While coronavirus had many negative fallouts in the world, it affected the use of technology to meet everyday needs positively, ICTna.ir reported.
Mobile Phone Penetration Rate
According to the reports, a total of 135.89 million mobile phone lines are currently active in Iran.
Mobile phone development in the current fiscal year’s third quarter (Sept. 23-Dec. 21, 2021) shows Hamrah-e Avval’s share of active lines is at 72 million subscribers, Irancell 58 million and RighTel 5 million.
Mobile Telecommunications Company of Iran, commonly abbreviated as MCI and also known as Hamrah-e Avval, is the largest mobile operator in Iran. MCI is a subsidiary of the Telecommunications Company of Iran and has approximately 17 million postpaid and 49 million prepaid subscribers.
Irancell is an Iranian telecom company that operates Iran's largest 2G-3G-4G-4.5G-5G mobile network, and fixed wireless TD-LTE internet services.
RighTel is the third mobile phone network operator of Iran.
The penetration rate of mobile phones in the country currently exceeds 161%.
The number of fixed telephone subscriptions has exceeded 29.31 million lines and its penetration rate has increased to 34%. Currently, 51,400 villages have communication linkups and 47,272 villages have home telephones.
Internet Penetration Rate
The latest statistical report from the information and communications technologies sector shows that the penetration rate of broadband internet in Iran has reached 122%.
The growth in the mobile internet sector (with a penetration rate of more than 109%) is evident, but the growth of fixed internet with a penetration rate of 13% is far from satisfactory.
The number of broadband internet subscribers in Iran is more than 102 million subscribers, of which 10.89 million subscribers have fixed broadband internet and 91.84 million people have mobile broadband subscription.
The number of mobile broadband subscriptions by the end of the third quarter of the year is as follows: Hamrah-e Avval has more than 48 million subscribers, Irancell over 39 million subscribers and RighTel about 4 million subscribers.
Iran Internet Operations Surveyed
Iran’s internet regulatory performance is not satisfactory
compared to that of some neighboring countries and globally, according to the latest report published by the International Telecommunications Union.
While the decline in quality and slowness of internet in the country have provoked criticism from many digital economy activists and widespread user dissatisfaction, experts attribute the current situation to various challenges.
Many criticisms have focused on bandwidth shortages, infrastructural weaknesses and government policies such as filtering and deliberate disruptions, Ebinews.ir reported.
Some experts believe that the non-competitive cyberspace, poor regulatory performance and the interference of several regulators and decision-making organizations with diverse agenda are among the main factors posing challenges in the field.
If these regulators, like those of other countries, had more independence and cohesion in decision-making, the situation could have been much better.
Although the score obtained from the quality of the country's regulatory performance in the global survey is favorable for the first to fourth generation internet, its fifth generation upgrade leaves much to be desired.
According to the latest ITU evaluation of the regulatory performance in different countries, which focuses on the development of 5G and its role in shaping the digital economy, Iran's score is 48.46 out of 100.
Compared to Turkey with a score of 66 or other peer countries, this is quite low and can be a warning sign for the future of communications in Iran.
In recent years, Iran’s Communications Regulatory Authority signed the "bitstream" contract for implementing a fiber-optic development project, but it is unlikely that the outcome of these decisions will improve the situation in the next three years. So, Iranians will have to grin and bear the current internet problems.
Iranian Regulation in World Rankings
Telecommunications in most countries is initially owned by the public sector and monopolized by the government.
However, telecom resources and infrastructure are used for the further development of the country and a regulator (CRA in Iran) generally intervenes to make adjustments and use this monopoly in the national interest.
Reforms such as privatization, liberalization and regulation pursue the ultimate goal of shaping a fully competitive market.
One of the measures taken by ITU every year since 2008 is to examine the regulatory performance of countries based on several indicators and assign a rank to each country.
By 2020, when countries had not made much progress in terms of adopting 5G internet, ITU reviewed the regulators of different countries based on a special methodology that was specific to the first to fourth generations.
In the surveys of 2020, Iran obtained a score of 86 out of 100, which is a desirable score. But in the 2021 surveys, as the methodology had changed and the main focus was on the development of 5G internet and digital economy, Iran scored 48.46 out of 100.
