From the point of view of experts, the main problems in the economic structure are inflation, constant exchange rate changes and sanctions.
According to Iran digital economy annotation, the meeting “Investigating the Political Dimensions of the Internet Price Increase” was held by the Data and Governance Laboratory in collaboration with Sharif Digital Observatory (Rad Sharif). This meeting was accompanied by the presence of “Mohammed Kishori”, the director of the Spectrum Group, “Mohammed Rezaei”, an expert in the field of communication, and “Arash Karimbeigi”, the CEO of Shuttle Mobile, who examined the dimensions of the increase in the Internet tariff, including the dissatisfactions between subscribers and operators, price suppression , mandated pricing and imposed payment obligations.
Keshvari emphasized that the most important reason for dissatisfaction among operators and subscribers is the imbalance between costs and service quality, and he considered the main problems in the economic structure to be inflation, constant exchange rate changes, and sanctions.
In response to reporters question about the effect of Internet monopoly in Iran on its pricing, Keshvari said: “In 1990 and 1991, the country’s infrastructure sold broadband much more expensively and it was very noticeable. After the exchange rate grew, even if the operators themselves bought bandwidth, maybe only a change would be achieved in terms of quality.
Currently, infrastructure income is 4 thousand billion tomans, of which 60% is allocated to broadband, in which case the total cost for operators does not make much difference; “But in terms of quality, due to the topology of the infrastructure, it will definitely have an impact.”
Next, Keshvari compared the conditions of Iran’s subscribers with other countries: “People are very dissatisfied because they have to bear the cost of filtering. We have to accept that the internet in Iran is still cheap, even with the increase in tariffs.
But the difference that Iran has with other countries is that people are required to buy internet packages and even if they are in a place where they can use its internet modem, they do not prefer this because of the bad quality of the internet. This is while in other countries, the internet is provided from fixed network with good price and quality.
He added: “Therefore, we give rights to both subscribers and operators due to complaints about the quality of the Internet; Because filtering is not done by operators and they do not need to be responsible in this regard.
While emphasizing that operators are the private sector in the field of communications and do not have government support like oil companies, Keshvari stated that the lack of international investment is one of the main reasons for the challenges and dissatisfaction. He explained about the costs related to 5G:
“A 5G site is currently $100,000. If only 10% of mobile sites are to be the first 5G, about 200 million dollars should be allocated to the investment in the radio site alone, which will not be able to recover its cost and make a profit even in a five-year period. It is necessary that these points be taken into consideration so that it does not suffer the fate of the telecommunications company, which cannot even pay its salaries.”
Karimbeigi also added: “In the last 10 to 15 years, there are those who make decisions in the relevant market and in the country’s telecom, who not only have no experience in telecom, but also have no experience in running a company in Iran and have specialized knowledge about costs and benefits or rights. And there are no costs. Riyal and dollar costs have increased in various dimensions and the 32% increase has no proportion considering inflation.”
Rezaei said about the existing dissatisfaction with the increase in the tariff of internet packages: “The event that we were all waiting for has happened, but everyone has a high level of dissatisfaction in this regard.”
One of the objectives of this tariff increase was to increase the profit margin of the operators, to provide cost-effective service and to establish social justice. The reason for that is that the regulator tried to make a decision based on peace at this point; This is while in other countries interaction and companionship is formed by the regulator with the operators and the annual goals are realized one by one.
Considering the sanctions and inflation in the country, the regulator should consider its indicators annually and in accordance with these issues, and the most important thing at this point is the review by the regulator.
The rules applied to operators are unreasonable
Rezaei considered the rules applied to operators to be unreasonable and stubborn. He believes that these stubborn rules only cause operators to take general measures to reach the applied indicators and fail to improve service quality.
Karimbeigi also emphasized that the operator is a business and should improve its services according to its cost and business plan: “Due to the disproportion between issues such as cost and benefit, margin, the gap between currency and Rial regarding operators’ costs, I I don’t think the necessary motivation will be created. Despite about 8 years of tariff suppression, it is not possible to create a balance and keep everyone happy.”
While stating that the operator is obliged to allocate an amount for investment in order to develop its network and services every year, Keshvari explained about the applicable solutions: “In order to solve part of the problems and dissatisfactions regarding quality, new technologies must be used to In this way, productivity and satisfaction were achieved.”
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