Alireza Ghalambor Dezfouli MTN Irancell CEO told reporters that the revenue of government from MTN Irancell projects during the past 9 years had been $6.3bn; "$4.2bn of which has been directly paid to the government by MTN Irancell during the past 9 years," Dezfouli added.
According to MTN Irancell Public Relations during a press conference held on the occasion of first anniversary of MTN Irancell 3G and 4G launching, CEO also provided examples of MTN Irancell's payments to the government including 2G, 3G and WiMAX License fee, revenue sharing, numbering, Universal Service Obligation (USO), regulation fee, GSM band frequency fee, microwave frequency fee, interconnection charges, customs and duties, income tax, withholding tax, transmission links, utility and energy costs, and the income made by governmental telecommunications companies. Dezfouli also added that a new range with the prefix 0903 was allocated to MTN Irancell by CRA; "this prefix is going to enter the market gradually," he said.
According to Dezfouli, last year, MTN Irancell successfully signed the Upgrade License Agreement to 3G and 4G mobile network and launched the pilot phase of 3G network coincidently with National Week of the Government; on 25 August 2015 Irancell launched its 3G network commercially and officially upon obtaining CRA approval. 4G service was launched for the first time in the country shortly after the launch of 3G network.
Talking about MTN Irancell 3G services coverage, Dezfouli told the press that "for the time being, more than 427 cities and villages and 56 main roads of all 31 provinces are covered by 3G network, and more than 82 cities are in the queue for receiving coverage of 4G service."
“Currently, there are 19,000 2G BTS sites which cover 45 million subscribers, 2,355 cities and villages, 85.7% of the population and 30,750km of the roads;MTN Irancell 3G network has 4,250 sites, 12.5 million subscribers, 427 cities and villages, coverage of 35.8% of the population and 180 TB of daily data traffic," he detailed.
He also provided the statistics on MTN Irancell 4G network, saying that it had 1,750 sites, 1 million USIM Cards, coverage of 82 cities and 11.6% of the population and 20 TB of daily data traffic.
On broadband network, Dezfouli told the press that MTN Irancell had 7,000 fixed and mobile broadband sites, 13 million subscribers, coverage of 427 cities and villages and 23 mobile smart phones and 300 TB of daily data traffic. “MTN Irancell obtained the TD-LTE License on August 23 2015 and launched its pilot phase on August 24, 2015; in 2010, Ericsson and Reliance Industries carried out the first field surveys in India through which they could achieve 80 Mb/s speed. Similarly, in 2011, China Mobile in cooperation with Huawei pilot-launched the LTE-TDD service in six cities of China," said the CEO.
"This service was launched as a 4G service by Soft Bank in 2012 in Japan and in 2013 in USA. The first commercial LTE-TDD in Middle East and East Africa was launched in 2014 and its first network in Iran was launched by MTN Irancell in 2015,” Dezfouli said, announcing launch of the first public Wi-Fi network in the country and operation of the 6000th MTN Irancell 3G/4G site on the previous day in the presence of MICT Minister. Dezfouli also commented on global data trend; "50 billion devices are going to be connected to each other through wireless system while for the time being 7.2 billion individuals are connected to each other through mobile lines and 1 billion houses through fixed lines."
"In every 24 hours, US$ 2.7 bn transactions are conducted through e-commerce and 700 thousand new users are joining the Internet. Moreover, 14.4 billion searches are made through Google search engine, 197 billion emails are sent across the world, 2.7 billion photos are shared and 328 million applications are downloaded,” he said.