Over 70% of Iranian schools linked to local intranet: Minister

Iran’s telecoms minister says more than 70 percent of the schools across the country have been linked to a local intranet network although he admits that the education department has been slow in providing various content services in the network.

Mohammad Javad Azari Jahromi said that a government plan for connecting Iranian schools to the National Information Network (NNI) had reached a good level of progress some seven months after it was launched.

“The statistics that came out two weeks ago of a last project control showed that more than 70 percent of all schools across the country had been connected to the NNI,” said Jahromi.

The minister suggested, however, that the progress made on an integrated system meant for providing educational content through the NNI had been relatively poor, saying it is totally up to Ministry of Education to provide the services.

Nearly 30,000 Iranian villages linked to mobile phone network since 2013: Minister

Iran says almost all villages across the country, a total of 34,090, have access to mobile phone services.

Jahromi said that the Ministry of Information and Communications Technology (ICT) had paid for all the costs associated with setting up the NNI infrastructure in the schools, including the installation of some smart equipment needed for using modern education services.

“One of our dreams in the ICT is to see pupils feel the joy of being connected to the NNI,” he said, adding, “The infrastructure layer for linkage is our responsibility and we would definitely create it.”

The Iranian government has been developing the NNI concurrent with plans to expand the coverage for fast Internet services across the country.

The NNI helped maintain many key services across Iran during an Internet blackout that came following fuel-related unrest in Iran in November.

Authorities plan to launch a first version of super-fast fifth generation Internet technology, known as 5G, until March 2021.

Latest government estimates suggests that more than 70 million people are currently using the fourth generation Internet services mostly through mobile applications.

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