ICT expansion in Alborz Province has raised the number of provinces with full internet access in rural areas to three, Information and Communications Technologies Minister Mohammad Javad Azari Jahromi said.
According to Jahromi, 100% of villages with more than 20 households in Alborz, Yazd and Hamedan provinces have been connected to the National Information Network, Ict.gov.ir reported.
Officials developed NIN in August 2016 as an alternative and independent network with content compatible with Islamic norms to help make indigenous content more accessible to Iranians nationwide.
Based on official statistics, 2.7 million people reside in Alborz, 1.9 million of whom are living in 27 villages.
“Until the beginning of the current fiscal year [March 2021], people in six villages didn’t have access to NIN,” the ICT minister said.
Rural connections were made possible, thanks to communication base stations built by domestic telecom companies, including Mobile Telecommunications Company of Iran and Irancell.
“The ICT projects were supposed to be completed a long time ago, but its implementation was slowed by US sanctions,” he added.
Jahromi declared that 96% of Iranian villages with more than 20 households have internet access.
“We are ahead of the Sixth Five-Year Development Plan [2017-22] by 16%,” he added.
The minister noted that promotion of communications technologies makes life more convenient for the general public, particularly during the pandemic.
“With over 13 million students, 1 million teachers, 4 million university students and 140,000 professors using online educational facilities around the country, ICT growth plays a critical role in people's lives,” he said.
“Internet and social media have become an inseparable part of life and economy, such that nearly 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.
Other Provincial Projects
In line with policies for enhancing communication access, the Iranian government has invested 2.07 trillion rials ($8.62 million) on the development of ICT infrastructure in the western province of Qazvin, making it an archetypal project of its kind.
The ICT minister announced that development projects have been launched to provide ICT services in Qazvin’s villages within six months.
“A total of 180 communication centers will be established in the province with an investment of 1.8 trillion rials [$7.5 million] to provide mobile network and internet coverage in underdeveloped areas,” he added.
Jahromi noted that an additional 270 billion rials ($1.12 million) have been earmarked for 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 increase significantly,” he said, explaining that the projects will be carried out in two phases over six months.
The ICT minister said the state-affiliated Telecommunications Company of Iran is committed to streamlining landline telephony in the province and fixing the network bugs in 67 areas over four months.
He also promised that all villages in Zanjan Province will be connected to the internet by August.
“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.
The minister has inaugurated 155 communication sites in rural areas to provide 15,000 residents and 250 schools with internet access. The sites were established with an investment of 1.34 billion rials ($5,580). The new connections increased the number of rural areas with internet access to 611.
Jahromi also inaugurated an ICT development center in the province at a cost of 320 billion rials ($1.33 million).
ICT officials say more good news is in the offing about the development of rural communication and internet access by the end of the current fiscal year (March 20).
Similar projects are also underway in South Khorasan and Markazi provinces.ion
NIN’s Potential
Officials attribute these developments to the expansion of the National Information Network.
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, as well as an addition of data processing racks and data centers.
Deputy ICT Minister Hamid Fattahi said the completion of NIN will help 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 2020, the first phase of a major database was launched in Bumehen, east of Tehran, with an investment of 4 trillion rials ($16.66 million) by the Telecommunications Infrastructure Company.
The project is aimed at bolstering NIN, expanding the country’s communications infrastructure and materializing a digital economy.
