Members of the Tehran Electronic Commerce Association said at the unveiling meeting of the second internet quality report in Iran that their goal in publishing such reports is to hold the authorities accountable and clarify the demands regarding internet quality.
Officials of the Ministry of Communications, the Supreme Council of Cyber Space and the President’s Scientific Technology Vice President were invited to attend this meeting, but only the representative of the Presidential Scientific Vice President was present in the meeting without giving any explanation.
According to Iran digital economy annotation, Pooya Pir Hosseinlou, the head of the Internet Commission of the Electronic Commerce Association, said at the unveiling meeting of the second report on Internet quality in Iran, which was held at the Tehran Chamber of Commerce building: “By publishing these two reports, we tried to turn the concept of low-quality Internet into a precise data-driven proposition.” do. The E-Commerce Association is concerned about the poor quality of the Internet as the root of the digital economy.
At the end of each section of the evaluations, the new report of the E-commerce Association has addressed the trustees who must be accountable to that section. In this regard, Pir Hosseinlou said: In the report, we tried to shed light on the laws and legal structures of the Internet custodians. Issues related to the Internet in Iran are always left to someone else who is absent and unaccountable, who is not known. We tried to introduce the institutions that should be responsible for various Internet problems.
The president, as the head of the Supreme National Security Council and the person who appoints the head of the National Security Council and the secretary of the Supreme Council of Cyberspace, and 6 members of the filtering committee are among his ministers, should be most accountable to these conditions.
He also mentioned the role of the Ministry of Communications in relation to Internet disruptions and said: The responsibility of Internet disruptions lies with the Ministry of Communications. This ministry should provide detailed reports in this regard, rather than rejecting the report of the E-Commerce Association and not providing an alternative report.
The head of the Internet Commission of the Electronic Commerce Association also criticized the performance of the operators: In the new government, filtering equipment will also be placed in the internal network, as a result, the cost of this equipment should be doubled. Operators can write a letter to the president to increase the price, how can they not protest to the president for this issue?
The Ministry of Communications does not disclose bandwidth statistics
After the association’s previous report on internet quality, the Ministry of Communications held a meeting with the CEO of Infrastructure Communications Company and the head of the regulator to respond to the association’s report. In that meeting, Mohammad Jafarpour, CEO of Infrastructure, disagreed with many parts of the report and said:
“This report has questioned the entire ICT industry, and as an expert, I say it is not true. I am really sad, why did you compare Iran network with Myanmar? “The condition of our network is better than many countries in the region.” Also, Amir Mohammadzadeh Lajevardi, the head of the regulator, also wanted to clarify the meaning of internet disruption.
Pir Hosseinlou explained: Mr. Lajevardi had not checked the report carefully enough. In the first report, it is clearly explained what is meant by the disorder. We held a final meeting with the infrastructure company on August 30th, and some of the problems were resolved right from the morning of the same day. Of course, the authorities did not accept that anything had changed and said that it was the same before.
He continued: The Ministry of Communications announced that we have no power to make policies.
Pir Hosseinlou also explained that the CEO of infrastructure did not agree with the publication of bandwidth statistics: Mr. Jafarpour said that he personally does not agree with such reports and that operators should publish these data separately, but to announce international bandwidth and such statistics, we must obtain permission from the upstream institutions.
Maziar Noorbakhsh, head of Innovation and Productivity Commission of Tehran Chamber of Commerce, also said: Internet is important from two aspects. One is its application in people’s daily life. Second, its impact on businesses in this area. In the Chamber of Commerce, we deal more with the second aspect. This action of the e-commerce association may strike some as operators, but it is important and necessary.
Noorbakhsh added: There is a wrong policy that bans the use of foreign products to support domestic products. Many of the limitations of the Internet are for the growth of domestic production. Unfortunately, this policy does not work like the rest of the closing and limiting policies.
Hamidreza Ahmadi, the vice-chairman of the Internet Commission of the Electronic Commerce Association, also said: Our mentality is that this report gets better every time. In the first report, we guessed a number of things, but in this report, we tried to be more clear and precise. This is a live report and needs to be updated from time to time.
About the effect of Internet quality on the state of startups, the CEO of Evand also said: “The quality of the Internet has affected employment.” When the quality of the internet is not good, we hold back on hiring and prepare our business plans defensively.
Ahmadi further said: There is a policy that the quality of the domestic internet becomes 5 times that of the foreign one. It seems that there is an intention that the quality of the international internet will go down so much that we will have to use the domestic internet.
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