Iran's Telecoms Minister Says Ministry Will Create 130,000 Jobs

The Telecommunications and Information Technology Ministry says it has plans to improve and expand the key sector by offering incentives and tax exemptions to technology related business, Mehr News Agency reported the minister, Mahmoud Vaezi, as saying this week.

In the past fiscal year that ended on March 20, close to 100,000 jobs were  created in the sector and ministry is trying to create 130,000 more jobs this year, he said.

The minister noted that the Telecoms Ministry is collaborating with the Cooperative, Labor and Social Welfare Ministry in creating jobs and the two ministries will start offering training courses in the coming months.

>3G and 4G

In the first six months of the current fiscal all cities will have access to third generation mobile Internet (3G). The minister said Iranian mobile operators are set to offer 4G Internet services in an additional 750 cities this year.

The ministry is set to offer 1.3 trillion rials ($35 million) of loans to knowledge-based companies this year. One of the main goals of the ministry this year is to help forge closer interaction between traditional business and technology-based firms.

Last year old-school businesses like real estate agencies and taxi companies have gone head-to-head with their peers using Internet offering the same services but at lower cost.

Infrastructure

 “The launch of third and the last phase of the National Information Network (NIN), which was schedule for May has been postponed for after the upcoming presidential election,” Vaezi said.

According to the minister, the Communications Regulatory Authority (CRA) is set to publish a report on the communications jam — caused by the huge demand — during the first hours of New Year's day. However Vaezi said “None of the communications conducted through the local network were disrupted.”

Telecom infrastructure has grown significantly during the past three years. When President Hassan Rouhani took office in mid-2013 the country’s Internet network capacity was 950 gigabytes. The number has grown 10 times and currently is 10,000 gigabytes.

During the same period Iran’s bandwidth has grown up to 6,800 gigabytes from the initial 624.