February 07 2020
A new poll shows that Iranians rate the services of the government-owned Telecommunications Company of Iran to be far worse than the services of any private sector phone companies.
The survey was done by the Communications Regulatory Authority (CRA) and allowed a top score of 20 for each company.
Privately-owned ISP Shatel scored 15.99 in the survey, closely followed by Sabanet with 15.32 and Datak at 14.8.
According to the report, the state-owned Telecommunications Company of Iran fared poorly and earned only 10.92 points—the lowest score among major landline ISPs.
In addition to landline internet, wireless services are offered by two companies, MTN-Irancell and Mobinnet. In CRA’s survey, Mobinnet scored 11.67 while Irancell, which is South African-owned, received 13.44.
Despite being banned in Iran, the messaging app Telegram, which through its channels and groups can be employed as a social media network, is the most popular platform in Iran with over 40 million users. Almost half of the population uses the service.
The second most popular social media platform in Iran is the photo-sharing service Instagram. There are 24 million Instagram users in the country, or 29 percent of the population.
Instagram’s parent company, Facebook, is less popular in Iran, partly because it has been blocked by the authorities for almost eight years. However, there are still 5.7 million Facebook users (via VPN).
Various local social media platforms have been established with state support over the past year. However, failing to earn internet users’ trust, the platforms have not been able to gain traction. Some of the services are Soroush, Rubika and iGap, according to the survey.
