Rural villages in Iran are being connected to the World Wide Web, with 326 villages in Fars Province in southwest Iran recently getting access to high-speed Internet.
The connectivity projected is part of the Universal Service Obligation Plan, which is a national project to give Internet access to rural communities.
Head of the Communications Regulatory Authority, Ali Asghar Amidian, said 153 billion rials ($4.2 million at market exchange rate) were allocated for extending high-speed Internet coverage to these villages, Tasnim News Agency reported.
The remaining villages are expected to receive Internet coverage by February 20.
Fars
Amidian noted that Fars Province has 1,692 villages, all of which fall under the USOP.
Based on the guidelines of the plan, a number of villages in the province will receive high-speed Internet coverage by May 20 and those without telephones will receive landlines by the end of the next Iranian fiscal year (March 2017).
The villages of Fars Province have a population of 666,977.
Amidian further said that under the same plan, 1,361 villages in Sistan-Baluchestan Province and 62 villages in Qom Province will receive access to high-speed Internet in the coming week.
Kerman
Just over 500 villages in the province of Kerman in southeast Iran also received access to high-speed Internet last week during a ceremony attended by the Minister of Communications and Information Technology Mahmoud Vaezi, according to a ministry press release.
"Increasing connectivity will prepare the ground for improving healthcare, promoting education and expanding social services in remote areas," Vaezi said at the inaugural ceremony.
Hormozgan
During a ceremony held on Friday, 376 villages in Hormozgan Province and Bandar Abbas, in the south of Iran, also received broadband Internet coverage.
On the sidelines of the ceremony, Lotfollah Sabouhi, a deputy at the Communications Regulatory Authority, said of all the villages earmarked to receive high-speed Internet coverage in Iran, 666 are in Hormozgan. Next year, 290 more villages in the province will receive coverage, IRNA quoted the official as saying.
"The penetration of Internet to villages will help citizens of these areas get receive a range of services such as e-governance procedures and educational material," he said.
