Iran has extended rural connectivity to cover thousands of villages

A report from Iran’s official IRNA news agency says that more than 35,000 villages have been connected to high speed internet networks over an eight-year period under a project to improve rural services. PressTV cites IRNA as saying that 35,519 remote villages had access to broadband services as of March 2020, up from virtually zero eight years before. A further 17,000 villages have received internet access but at lower speeds. The government introduced legislation in 2017 requiring the country’s two main cellular operators, MCI and MTN Irancell, to expand their networks to more rural regions. Landline phones have reached four million households in 47,000 villages, according to the report.