The performance of operators in fiber optic will be reviewed until the end of January

The Radio Communications Regulatory Organization can be considered the most important department of the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology.

where it supervises the performance of fixed and mobile operators and regulates the regulations in this area. In a general view, it can be said that regulation sets the future of the ICT field.

according to Iran digital economy annotation, Amir Mohammadzadeh Lajevardi is the third head of the regulator in the last two years. He went from the infrastructure communication company to the regulation of this field and now he is in charge of implementing a project that is of great value to the ministry. The optical fiber development project started almost at the beginning of this year, and now Lajevardi says that at the end of December, the performance of the operators will be evaluated, and if they have not fulfilled their obligations, these obligations will be taken from them and given to other operators.

The attached detailed conversation with Lajevardi is not limited to optical fiber and other topics such as 5G, the increase in the price of Internet packages and the second report of the E-Commerce Association are also discussed in it, the full text of which follows.

20 million optical fiber coverage is supposed to be created in the country, and according to the latest statistics, 5.2 million households have been covered, which is about 26% progress of the project. Do you think you will reach 20 million by the end of next year?

We have promised to create 20 million covers by the end of the government. With the progress we have now, we are almost certain that we can achieve this coverage. The five million and 200,000 households that you mentioned are based on the household statistics of 2015, and we have considered all the measurement criteria to be strict for ourselves.

We have even started working in cities that may not have high coverage at the beginning; But the overall progress of the work shows us that the project is satisfactory and we have planned to reach eight million by the end of this year. By the end of the government, God willing, we will reach 20 million.

Now small cities are included in the statistics and are covered one by one. One or two provinces have been fully covered, but big cities are still one of the problems, and it seems that most of the subscribers will be in big cities, but the municipalities have not yet cooperated. A memorandum of understanding was signed by the Minister of Communications with Tehran Municipality. What is your plan for big cities and metropolises?

A large part of project implementation requires understanding with municipalities. We have more than 2021 cities with which we have to understand. We have tried to move things forward with understanding in the past. Although we have legal requirements, we have tried to move forward with understanding, interaction and cooperation with municipalities, and there is no need for legal references and the use of legal tools.

Naturally, as the city gets bigger, the mayors raise certain requirements. We try to interact with them as much as possible and move the work forward. Naturally, metropolises have their own specific needs. In the current situation, we do not have many challenges with other metropolises, apart from the two metropolises that we have not yet reached an understanding with.

Which cities are they?

Isfahan and Tabriz are among the cities where we have always said that their mayors must pay attention to national interests and help to start the implementation work in these two cities. Other metropolises have cooperated well. In Mashhad, work has started in a part of the city. In Shiraz, the memorandum was signed in the past few months and we are in the process of signing the contract.

In Ahvaz, the work has been started for a long time. In Qom, we can almost say that it is nearing completion. In Tehran, we had a memorandum of understanding with the Tehran Municipality about a month ago, for which we should thank them.

In this memorandum, it is mentioned that the contract should be concluded within three months, so that we can start the work in an operational and executive manner. We have held preliminary meetings with the municipality after concluding the memorandum and now we are coordinating and preparing to enter the implementation phase.

Naturally, our entry into metropolises and provincial centers that are not metropolises will increase the speed of our coverage. We are very optimistic and we are trying to be able to conclude agreements and contracts with municipalities in more than 80% of our population coverage before the new year, and actually a small number of agreements and agreements will be postponed to next year.

Our assessment is that if we reach 8 million this year, the back of the main work will be broken, and we can promise to do 20 million by the end of the government, God willing.

Regarding the understanding with Tehran municipality, it was first said that the municipality itself wants to enter this project as an operator, and then the ministry probably did not agree and another model was put forward. Can you explain how the municipality is supposed to cooperate?

The project we have started now is the home and business fiber optic project. The infrastructure that is created is the infrastructure that we consider to be the property of the operator for 40 to 50 years in some memorandums and contracts. An investment is made and an infrastructure is created that should be available to the operator. Tehran Municipality also had requirements and considerations regarding ownership, which we devised.

Ownership of the operator will be retained for the infrastructure it creates. Of course, every operator who creates an infrastructure is not necessarily its full owner. We have required that 30% of this infrastructure should be made available to other applicants and operators with the regulation of the regulatory organization. Therefore, the owner of this infrastructure must be the operator himself is one of the key issues that we emphasize in the implementation of this project.

Tehran Municipality also cooperated and informed us of its requirements, and we tried to meet their requirements, and in my opinion, a win-win model was provided for Tehran Municipality, communication operators and the Ministry of Communications. Hopefully, within this three-month period, which has already been about a month, we will be able to enter into the process of concluding the contract and start the work in an executive manner.

Although the work has not been stopped for a long time and it has started in Tehran, but the point we had was that this infrastructure should be provided in a standard form in the form of the standards announced by the Radio Communications Regulatory Organization, because sometimes the operators use fiber on the wall. They did the work; But this was not up to our standards. Therefore, by signing a contract with Tehran Municipality and their participation, God willing, this infrastructure will be provided.

Tavanir did not cooperate with this project at all this year. There is a clause in next year’s budget bill that Tavanir is obliged to cooperate. Do you think this will happen? And what effect does it have on the project process?

At the moment, we did not insist on this issue because we believe that the correct and optimal infrastructure is the ground infrastructure that should be created. Therefore, we encouraged the operators in the implementation of the project to do this on the ground as much as possible. Because, naturally, the stability of the service in the ground infrastructure is more than the air infrastructure.

Therefore, we have not been so persistent, even though we have told Tavanir many times that we are willing to cooperate, but it has not been the main priority for us to use Tavanir’s infrastructure for our endpoints. Although the main roads must be on the ground. Some operators often raise the issue of terminal infrastructure, which increases the speed of work by using a powerful infrastructure, but we believe that the stability of the service may be affected.

Some cities that are mountainous, like the cities of Kurdistan province, it is not possible to implement the project on the ground.

Yes, we are currently advancing our final infrastructure by air in Ilam, but we cannot generalize this to all places. In certain places, we cooperate with Tavanir and the Ministry of Roads and Urban Development for a series of intercity connections. But this year, we have not prioritized this issue, and hopefully next year, when we want to reach homes from a distance of 300 meters, the use of Tavanir infrastructure can help us a lot.

Iran Telecommunication Company finally signed the UNSP memorandum. It is heard that the license has not been given to this company yet. Please explain about this and that the distribution of 20 million households was done and then telecommunications entered the project, now what is the share of telecommunications in this year’s 8 million?

We distributed almost 18 million and the distribution that has been done now has exceeded 20 million and we have precautionary coverage. In the last months of the 13th government, we will have 20 million to stain and finish, but we have seen more than 20 million.

This January is the month that we will evaluate the performance of the operators, although we evaluate their performance every week, but this month will be the month that if an operator has not fulfilled his obligations on time, we will withdraw them and transfer them to another operator who has done the job well. We deliver. Naturally, telecommunication is also included in this. We can take the commitment of other operators that the regulatory agency determines have not performed well and give it to the telecom.

Telecom signed seven million coverages in the form of the UNSP addendum – which we sometimes consider an independent nature due to its importance and call it a license, but it is an addendum. About two million of these commitments are in metropolitan cities and five million are outside metropolitan cities.

So far, five and a half million points have been determined in cooperation with telecommunications and the process of its implementation has started. We have also scheduled how many should be completed by the end of this year. The first 6 months of the next year, the second 6 months and the beginning of 1404, these points have been determined, the plans have been made, the space will be completely competitive, and this competitiveness has made us sure that this project will definitely reach twenty million covers.

But on the FTTx site, apart from North Khorasan, where telecommunication was added, there is still no commitment for this company.

Some telecom obligations are subject to incentives, some are not. The points that are subject to incentives must be given to one operator and it is not possible to consider two operators for the same point and give incentives to both.

Of these seven million that we have earmarked for telecommunications, two million will be subject to incentives. It means that there are two million telecommunications and no other operator is busy there. Of these two million – because we have naturally given points to other operators – about five hundred thousand points were left to be eligible for incentives and we did not give them to anyone, as we announced these points to telecommunications. Of course, all this is based on the statistics of the 2015 census.

A part of North Khorasan, South Khorasan and some other places have been considered for telecommunications, which are 500 thousand so far. Another million and a half remains to be announced, which includes incentives. We have left this month, which is the tenth month, for evaluation. If other operators have not done the work, we will take it back from them and give it to telecommunications and we will have the same plan in the coming months.

Apart from these two million, other points can be shared. It means that telecommunications should do the work with other operators, especially in big cities.

It is heard that the operating license of Iran Telecommunication Company has not been renewed yet. Is this true?

Telecom has almost completed its documentation and provided us with it. I think it will be officially announced in the coming days.

You mentioned that the review is going to be done in January. What is the rating of operators based on? How has the incentive payments to them gone so far as I know you have had at least one payment.

Many operators were messaging us that we didn’t think that the optical fiber development account would be created and the payment would be made from it. We promised the operators that we will make the first payment at the end of the summer. On September 30, we made the first payment so that the payment process started.

So the payment was made to the operators. Now, if the operators are located in a city that is outside the provincial capital, they will receive 1,200,000 Tomans per household, and 500,000 Tomans per household if the provincial capital is other than the metropolis. In the big cities, they are not given any subsidy.

We evaluate operators based on several indicators. One is their licensing obligations. We have put the license obligations in the form of three-month cuts in their license. We evaluate them every season and one of our evaluation indicators is the fulfillment of license obligations.

Now we have operators who have exceeded their license obligations in terms of the number of covered households, but they did not do the work in the city that we announced to them and did it in another city.

the amount of drilling done by the operator; Compliance with drilling and ducting standards; Whether the microduct has followed the seven ways or not; How was it repaired? the number of FATs used; OLTs and other equipment it has; The fee charged by the user for connection and… all these are indicators that have an impact on the rating and evaluation of operators, and now it is clear to us which operator has progressed according to the plan, as well as licensing obligations, including the number of covered areas, the cities that It should have been covered, the service it provides to the user.

In this project, operators are required to install network evaluation equipment so that we can see in real time that the service they provide to the user in terms of network quality indicators such as RTT, Packet Loss, Jitter and the speed they provide to the user.

Our top two or three operators are now known, we also have two operators who are behind and we need to compensate as soon as possible.

Do you make these public?

I think it might be too early to announce the operators that are a little behind. Maybe we will give them another chance to compensate. As the first penalty, we will withdraw their commitments, and this month is the time to withdraw some of their commitments.

Rumors are heard about this project and even sometimes provincial officials such as Kerman province have complained that the dockets are empty or the fibers are collected after the opening ceremony. How much control do you have that a cover is actually made?

Naturally, many of the points that are said are not true, we will not make any payment to the operator until our monitoring guys who are present in the areas give confirmation, and the implementation of his obligations will not be confirmed. The points raised are different depending on the conditions and each province and operator.

Naturally, project implementation has several steps; The first step is digging. The fiber can be shot later. It takes 3-4 months between drilling and fiber shot. What is important and the municipality and other organizations should cooperate, is the first step or digging.

When will it reach the coverage stage?

When the fiber is shot, passive and active equipment such as cabinets, OLT equipment, etc. are placed. The colleagues of our monitoring department go to the place, at the points where the operator claims that I have reached a radius of 300 meters from the houses, they do an operational test, they do a speed test, they make sure, and then it is counted as the final point.

The only point is that sometimes the operators have an understanding with the municipalities that the municipality or a company introduced by the municipality will repair the excavated places. In the city you gave an example, there was an understanding with the municipality; But the municipality was delayed in the implementation of the work and the restoration of excavations took a long time, which made this issue last.

One of these commitments is to increase the 4G download speed, which should reach approximately 20 megabytes. While the country of Kuwait registered 10 gigs a few days ago, don’t you think we are far from them?

The example you give and the 10 gigabytes that Kuwait tested, a month ago at the telecom exhibition, Irancell also unveiled the speed of 6.5 gigabytes, and it is for millimeter wave frequencies, which by the way we are checking to be able to use fiber in the last mile. Use millimeter wave frequency.

We are not limited to 4G in the commitments we have received from the operators, and we have also received 5G numbers that will cover at least 10% of the urban population by next year. In 5G, if the operators use a frequency below 1000 MHz, they can nominally provide 150 to 200 Mbps service, and its operation is about 50 Mbps. But if they come to a higher frequency, they can serve the user above 500 Mbps. Now there is 2G in the country and we cannot compare this service with a 5.5G service that has been tested in Kuwait.

Resolution 349 has allowed fixed operators to increase tariffs. How many percent is this tariff increase?

The increase in tariffs for fixed internet is a maximum of 34%. At higher speeds at 30 megabytes, we have increased about 16%. We have also increased the price of 50 megabytes by 7% to encourage users to use higher speeds. Therefore, we have a 34% tariff increase on international traffic, whether in the fixed operator or in the mobile operator, which does not include domestic traffic that can meet the essential and basic needs of people, which are often on domestic services.

The obligations that were announced were only for mobile operators, fixed operators do not have a special obligation?

The constants are practically their obligations in line with the implementation of the optical fiber project for homes and businesses. That is, we monitor their performance there moment by moment and the commitment they have given us is in line with the development of this network.

It is said that some military institutions want 20 megabytes from the beginning and end of this band. What has been decided in this case?

According to our research, for a series of governance requirements, between 10 and 15 percent of the frequency band is allocated by various groups such as military groups. This is also the case in our country. We are consulting and we have reached the final points, which if the negotiations end, I hope we will present them clearly.

The second report of the Electronic Commerce Association on Internet Quality has been published. This report says that Iran’s internet quality is really bad. At the time of the first report, you did not confirm this. As someone who is the regulator of this field, how do you see the state of the Internet and what is your assessment of this report?

The first report was published when I was in the Organization for Regulatory Regulation and Radio Communications, and we expressed our opinions in a meeting whose video was released to the public. In our opinion, there was no accurate assessment in the report. This issue is also clear in the meeting.

I believe that the approach of the second report is more political than content and technical. We have several indicators that we have to evaluate based on whether the condition and quality of the network has improved or decreased.

A series of indicators are network quality indicators such as RTT, Packet Loss and Jitter, which are available and we have improved in all three compared to the last three years. These are qualitative indicators.

There are many indicators for user experience. For example, the user may complain about the blocking of a site or platform, which could be from inside the country, or from the banned sites that we had announced for the previous report. Attention should be paid to these. Or, for example, we cannot evaluate the speed in the country based on Cloudflare.

Cloudflare, what percentage of the traffic of our country? In benchmarked rankings, most countries with high rankings are countries where Cloudflare has a CDN. These issues were raised before and we told our friends that if they have accurate and reliable data, they can raise it. Both to the Regulatory Organization and Radio Communications and to the Infrastructure Communications Company to examine and analyze them in detail whether these arguments are true or not.

Another indicator we have in our evaluation is people’s complaints. We have the 195 system in the regulatory organization, which can evaluate the decrease and increase of public complaints from operators and different categories. Apart from this year, which has not yet ended, my colleagues have prepared a report for the past three years, showing how many people’s complaints and complaints there were.

Now we know that the time to respond to complaints has decreased in which operators or the number of user complaints has increased greatly, and we hope to be able to publish these statistics on the regulatory and radio communications website in line with public transparency. Now, a large percentage of the complaints that people have are in fixed line telephone communications, which are caused by the theft of equipment.

Therefore, some of these complaints and issues that are raised need to be analyzed and evaluated in a specialized collection without any political approach. We had already given the answer for the first report, which I think was enough.

A series of sites and platforms like Google Play are filters, the reason for which is not clear. I know some steps have been taken, but ultimately a large part of the decision-making group in the filtering committee is from the government. Does the ministry have a decision to make more efforts to remove the filter?

At least twice, the Ministry of Communications has raised this issue in the working group to determine examples of criminal content. Last time, I asked the representative of the computer trade union system as a representative of the private sector to come to the working group and express their arguments.

Nasr’s colleagues emphasized that we have solid evidence that reopening must be done. The secretariat of the working group also cooperated with the presence of a representative of a part of the private sector. They were invited, they sent a representative, but my personal assessment was that they did not do a good defense and their defense could have been more accurate and appropriate if the issue was not voted on.

Each of these issues should be examined in a specialized manner. For example, what are the positive and negative points of the same platform that you mentioned if it is blocked? How much does it increase user security? How much does it reduce his security? How open does it help if that platform applies policies on the user’s phone without their permission? How does it help in forcing user software updates? A feature that domestic markets do not have.

These should be thoroughly investigated in a technical and specialized manner, apart from political noises. A complete, accurate, scientific and technical report will be prepared and it will definitely be able to be presented to the governing authorities who want to make a decision.