The Competition Council has ordered the definition of new internet packages, which the Ministry of Communications had promised for a year
According to the Iran digital economy annotation, The spokesperson of the Competition Council announced that according to the new resolution of this council, mobile phone operators were obliged to provide their subscribers with various high-volume internet packages.
It has been more than two years since mobile phone operators removed high-volume and long-term internet packages. A decision that the Ministry of Communications and the Regulatory Organization could not prevent. A measure that seems to be taken in order to compensate the costs and not change the mobile internet tariff.
Sepehr Dadjo Tavakoli, the spokesperson of the Competition Council, stated: “The Competition Council issued a resolution against this action of internet service providers (based on complaints received from the public) and required the operators to provide more diverse internet packages with high volumes. which actually responds to consumers’ taste.”
Based on this, in its 623rd session, which was held this evening (Tuesday, December 7th), the competition council opposed the provision of high-volume packages with a short usage period, which is actually a form of monopoly in the provision of internet package services, and It approved that these operators are required to provide a variety of high-volume packages at a normal time and of course at a normal price.
Also, the operators were required to provide packages with appropriate volume and appropriate length of time (as before but more diverse) and the price tariff was also within the framework of the approvals of the Law on the Regulation of Radio Communications; Therefore, the tariff should not increase.
It should be mentioned that after the removal of long-term and bulky internet packages of mobile operators, “Eisa Zarepour” repeatedly promised the return of bulky packages in response to public criticism. A promise that, of course, has not yet been fulfilled. For example, in early September 2022, Zarepour announced that he had ordered the regulator to notify mobile operators that a long-term package of 60 GB would be defined and offered by them within a week, but this promise was not fulfilled.
Six months later, Zarepour repeated the same promise and cited the drop in operators’ income as the reason for not fulfilling it. On April 15 of this year, he said: “60 GB Internet packages will definitely be offered in the new year.” This promise should have been pursued more seriously, but after the mentioned period, we faced the limitations that occurred to provide 60 GB packages, and the operators’ revenues decreased between 10 and 15 percent at the beginning.
This is despite the fact that last year the head of the Regulatory and Communications Regulatory Organization clearly stated that they are not in favor of providing long-term internet packages by mobile operators. Abbasi Shahkoh believed that providing a long-term and high-volume package of mobile internet causes competition with fixed internet, therefore, they do not agree with the definition of such packages.
This is despite the fact that mobile phone operators have repeatedly complained about the mandatory pricing of the Internet. In the middle of September of this year, the chairman of the board of directors of Shatel, calling the non-increase of prices populist, stated that such an issue has hit the roots of the ICT industry.
According to the CEO of Shatel Mobile, the lack of increase in the price of Internet packages in the last seven years has caused the companies active in this field to limit their development.
Now we have to wait and see if the promise of defining new internet packages will be fulfilled.
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