According to Abbasi Arand, there have been years when they have invested more than one billion dollars, but now the operators’ investment is a maximum of 300 million dollars.
According to the Iran digital economy annotation, the CEO of Irancell believes that the fixed tariff on the one hand and the increase in dollar and rial costs on the other hand have taken away the possibility of sufficient investment from the operators. According to him, this has caused only the quality of the network to be maintained due to the growth of consumption.
Bijan Abbasi Arand”, the CEO of Irancell, during the Telecom 2023 exhibition, referring to the request of the operators to increase the internet tariff, said:
The data tariff has not increased since 2016; Therefore, due to the fixed tariffs, naturally, the growth of the operator’s income has been solely through the growth of consumption. This is while about 65 to 70 percent of mobile operators’ expenses are in foreign currency, and over the past years, the exchange rate has multiplied and we have been facing annual inflation in the rial sector, which has led to an increase in wages and service costs.
According to him, various companies cooperate with Irancell in the development, maintenance and upgrading of the network, supply of equipment, etc., whose costs increase year by year: “Despite the increase in costs, the growth of our income was only proportional to the growth of consumption, which is the lack of The balance between income and cost has taken away the possibility of investment from the operator.
Abbasi-Arand emphasized that limiting the growth of the tariff and its stability has practically reduced the operator’s investment ability: “There were years when we invested more than one billion dollars; For example, when we were planning to develop the fourth generation. But currently, the investment of mobile operators has reached a maximum of 200 to 300 million dollars, and due to the growth of consumption, only the quality of the network will be maintained.”
Stating that the development of the fifth generation, optical fiber infrastructure, etc., requires more investment, he said that the fixed tariffs have tied the hands of operators and created restrictions. But isn’t it possible to compensate expenses from other sources of income such as non-operating income? In response to this question, the CEO of Irancell said:
“The operator may have a high revenue number, but its cash flow is not high enough to make a profit by depositing it in a bank or similar investments. We have divided most of our cash resources into two parts; One is current expenses that are allocated to companies and contractors, and one part is development. “We have taken great facilities from banks to order new equipment and provide them.”
According to him, they spend about 35% of their income on investment.
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