A 2017 report by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) shows that although all but eight countries improved their overall (ICTs) Development Index (IDI), Iran ranks second in improving its ITU information and communication technologies.
'The Islamic Republic of Iran has forged ahead with telecommunications development, and mobile broadband in particular is showing strong growth,' the ITU report suggested.
'Significant infrastructure investment has developed widespread nationwide coverage of mobile networks and a national fiber-optic backbone. There is a high level of basic mobile access and mobile broadband has been growing rapidly since its recent deployment,' the report added.
Giving a brief introduction about the operators in Iran, it wrote, 'By 2016, the number of mobile subscriptions exceeded the population with 93 per cent of homes having a mobile phone (94 per cent in urban areas and 88 per cent in rural zones). 239 Mobile broadband is at a more nascent stage but has been growing rapidly.'
'Unlike many other developing nations, penetration is relatively high. TCI [the partly privatized Telecommunication Company of Iran] is the leader in the fixed broadband market, offering ADSL and optical fiber at speeds of up to 50 Mbps. WiMAX providers are looking to migrate to LTE for fixed wireless access. Backbone networks are operated by the Telecommunications Infrastructure Company of Iran (TIC), which has an extensive national optical fiber backbone and metropolitan rings totaling over 200,000 kilometers.'
Saying that Iran has had submarine connectivity since 1992 and is currently served by half a dozen international undersea fiber-optic cable systems, it added, Iran 'has cross-border terrestrial connections with Azerbaijan, Pakistan and Turkey, and offers international bandwidth to landlocked Afghanistan, Armenia and Turkmenistan.'
The report also said, 'Broadband was a key part of the Islamic Republic of Iran’s fifth Five-Year Development Plan covering the period 2011- 2015. The plan called for 36 million broadband connections by 2016 and deployment of FTTP networks in the country’s ten largest cities. As a result of the impact of international sanctions, the plan’s targets were not completely met. However, greater broadband connectivity remains a goal of the sixth Five-Year Development Plan (2016-2021).'
Figures published by the Ministry of Information and Communications Technology of Iran support the report:
Since September 2007, the penetration rate of fixed telephone rose from 33.43 to 38.61 percent, reaching 30,590,323 lines.
Fixed-broadband subscriptions reached from 9,480,023 (in mid March 2017) to 10,490,118 in mid September 2017), just in six months.
The approximately 81 million people in Iran use more than 156 million SIM cards.
Active mobile-broadband subscribers are more than 41 million.
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Tehran, March 14, IRNA – Iran is the first in Asia and second in the world in development of information technology and telecommunications infrastructure, said Iran's Minster of Information and Communications Technology Mohammad-Javad Azari-Jahromi.
