Internet service providers have been obliged to expand bandwidth and improve service quality, according to a new diktat by the Communications Regulatory Authority of Iran.
CRA has announced that the bandwidth provided by ISPs will be monitored. In case of observing a breach of contract with subscribers, companies’ service providing license will be revoked, reported Mehr News Agency on September 4.
Due to some legal ambiguities, instead of dedicating the bandwidth specified in the contracts to each subscriber, ISPs split bandwidth between several users at once and provide services of lower quality than what have been initially promised.
This has caused much consternation to Internet subscribers who pay a princely sum for Internet packages.
According to the new directive, ISPs are required to observe their contract clauses about bandwidth and provide services in complete accordance with their legal obligations.
Hossein Fallah Josheqani, deputy director of CRA, said the service prices are not to be set by the CRA, but it will monitor the quality of services to protect consumers’ rights.
According to the official, a minimum bandwidth per user has been determined by the CRA for fixed communication providers and the activities of mobile Internet service providers will also be regulated soon.
In a statement, Josheqani said: “The regulator has not issued any ban on unlimited Internet services and operators are obliged to provide services in accordance with subscribers’ needs.”
This follows the development of the implementation of a recent scheme by Iran’s Telecommunications Infrastructure Company that instantly provides Service Level Agreement reports to subscribers.
On Stats.tic.ir, users can instantly access the SLA report on latency, packet loss and jitter.
By referring to the website, users can discern where the source of a network problem lies. Accordingly, the entity violating its obligations will have to pay a fine.
Currently, the service is only available in the Persian language.
