Mobile Internet users in Iran have more than tripled in the past two years, according to a new report.
Local technology website Zoomit reports this is mainly due to the fact that the leading mobile operators in Iran—Mobile Telecommunications Company of Iran (Hamrahe Avval or MCI) and Irancell—began offering 3G and 4G services over the past two years.
Iran’s Internet Management Center, affiliated to Iran’s Information Technology Organization, has recently released data for the first three months of the current fiscal year (started March 21) that shows there were 29,580,719 mobile Internet users in Iran by the end of that period.
During the Iranian year ending March 21, 2014, there were 9,207,252 mobile Internet users in Iran. After 3G and 4G services were offered in the country, the number of users increased by 2.5% reaching 23,918,455 the year after.
This means 38.67% of the population are using mobile Internet. A total of 7,642,281 users from Tehran are using mobile Internet, which places the capital on top of the list of Iranian cities that are connected via mobile.
Qom, Alborz, Bushehr and Hormozgan are also among provinces with the highest mobile Internet connectivity rates, each having penetration rates of above 47%.
Aside from MCI and Irancell, Iran’s third operator RighTel has also started offering 4G Internet services in certain districts.
