While detailing government efforts for expansion of ICT infrastructure in rural areas, the minister of communications and information technologies said all villages in Zanjan Province will be connected to the internet by August.
Mohammad Javad Azari Jahromi added that 100 villages with over 20 households in Zanjan will be connected to the internet soon, IRIB reported.
“In a matter of weeks, all 712 villages will be connected to the internet. A total of 102,000 households are living in these villages,” he said.
During a trip to the province last week, the minister inaugurated 155 communication sites in rural areas to provide 15,000 residents and 250 schools with internet access. The sites were established with 1.34 billion rials ($5,150) of investment. The new connections increased the number of rural areas with internet access to 611.
Jahromi also inaugurated an ICT development center in the province set up with an investment of 320 billion rials ($1.23 million).
In a meeting with provincial authorities, the minister said 96% of Iranian villages with over 20 households have access to internet.
“We are 16% ahead of the Sixth Five-Year Development Plan [2016-21],” he added.
The promotion of communication technologies makes life convenient for people, especially during the current pandemic.
“With over 113 million pupils, 1 million teachers, 4 million university students and 140,000 professors nationwide using online facilities for educational purpose, ICT development plays a pivotal role in everyday life of people,” he said.
“Internet and social media have become an inseparable part of commerce in today’s economy, since almost all small and large enterprises use different online platforms to expand their businesses.”
Stressing that communication justice is part of social justice, Jahromi said maximum effort has been made for expanding the country’s ICT infrastructures.
Projects in Kermanshah and Qazvin
Mobile Telecommunications Company of Iran (known as Hamrah-e Avval in Persian) declared that since the beginning of the current Iranian year (March 2020), it has established 48 mobile communication stations in the western province of Kermanshah.
MCI says it has invested 480 billion rials ($1.84 million) in the projects and launched the stations in collaboration with the provincial office of the Telecommunications Company of Iran and NAK Telecom Management Services.
These efforts have been in line with Universal Service Obligations, proposed by the ICT Ministry, which obliges internet service providers to ensure that a baseline level of services is provided to every resident of a country.
Early this week, the ICT minister said the Iranian government has invested 2.07 trillion rials ($7.96 million) in the expansion of ICT infrastructure in the western province of Qazvin.
He said the ministry is planning to establish 180 communication centers in the province with 1.8 trillion rials [$6.83 million] to provide mobile network and internet coverage in underdeveloped areas.
“An additional 270 billion rials [$1 million] will be spent on the expansion of fiber-optic network by 180 kilometers in the province. A similar project is underway in Qazvin to install 120 kilometers of fiber-optic cables, over 80% of which have been implemented. With another 180 kilometers, cable-based communication capacity will be significantly enhanced,” he said.
“The projects will be carried out in two complementary phases spread over six months. The first part is scheduled to deliver results by late April.”
NIN’s Role
Officials attribute these developments to the establishment of National Information Network launched in August 2016 as an alternative and independent network with content compatible with Islamic values to facilitate Iranian users’ access to indigenous content.
In December 2020, the ICT Ministry announced that it has established over 80% of the integrated network’s infrastructure through the expansion of fiber-optic connections, establishment of communication stations and towers, and a surge in the number of data processing racks and data centers.
Deputy ICT Minister Hamid Fattahi said the completion of NIN will remove the deficiencies and poor quality of internet and mobile connections in rural areas.
He noted that the ICT Ministry has put maximum effort into boosting NIN’s performance by expanding the network’s data centers and data processing capacity.
In mid-September, the first phase of a major database was launched in Bumehen, east of Tehran, with an investment of 4 trillion rials ($15.38 million) by the Telecommunications Infrastructure Company.
The database is aimed at empowering NIN, expanding the country’s communications infrastructure and materializing a digital economy. It boasts a terabit per second storage and a computing capacity sufficient to run basic functional services, including email, messengers and search engines.
Noting that these basic services are vital for internet users, Fattahi said the infrastructure enables experts to develop local versions of today’s most popular services and gradually replace them, since a domestic database can reduce the cost and increase the speed and quality of services.
The database specified 100 racks and 500 servers to would-be local messengers and search engines. The capacity can be easily boosted, depending on the type of services targeted and the development of hosting and cloud computing infrastructure.
A rack houses servers, networking devices, cables and other data center computing equipment.
“The database has a massive capacity for boosting employment in private businesses,” he said.
In line with efforts to boost NIN’s function, major mobile operator MTN-Irancell launched a datacenter with 407 racks in late May.
Executed with an investment of 11 trillion rials ($42.3 million), the data center added a 25% data storage capacity.
Officials say the project is aimed at extending a helping hand to data security and independence, while contributing to the development of NIN in tandem with the digital economy.
