Irancell Brings TD-LTE to Iran
Irancell Launched its LTE-TDD for households and businesses in Iran. This is the first time that this technology is introduced in Iran.
Yesterday, Irancell held a press conference for its newly launched service LTE-TDD for the first time in the country. The operator and internet provider giant launched the service in 25 provinces of Iran simultaneously. All the major cities such as Mashhad, Qazvin, Qom, Zahedan, Kerman, Arak, Ardabil, Urmia and many other cities are on the list. Unlike other connections such as ADSL, Dialup, and WiMAX, users are getting a faster connection and without the limitations of older connections such as change of location, immobility and need of a landline. With this new service, even people or businesses who are located in a densely populated area can also enjoy a fast internet connection.
Last year Irancell got the license for its LTE-TDD and a day after they launched the service in beta mode. We should mention that Irancell was providing the internet via WiMAX in Iran but with the launch of LTE, They decided that they should shut down WiMAX. The bands for LTE-TDD overlap with those used for WiMAX, which can easily be upgraded to support LTE-TDD. With this fact, the Irancell’s decision for shutting down its WiMAX service and launching LTE-TDD seems reasonable.
Irancell launched its 3G and 4G services 20 months ago. Right now Irancell is providing its 3G services to 1040 regions consisting of 527 cities and its 4G services to 240 regions consisting of 203 cities in Iran. “We have 17M broadband internet users in the country with 25M active users using our network to connect to the internet. In comparison to last year’s statistics, we have %50 growth in terms of number of active users, and data usage per user increased by %350,” said Alireza Ghalambor Dezfouli, the CEO of Irancell.
The first LTE-TDD was launched in the U.S. in 201,3 and in 2014 the first commercial service was launched in West-Asia and East-Africa by STC. Between 2013 to 2015, 76 LTE-TDD networks got launched in 43 countries and 93 LTE-TDD networks are going to be launched in 60 countries soon.
As we covered in our previous news, MTN the mother company of Irancell is in talks with Iranian Net to invest in the national fiber optic project of Iran. With these initiatives from MTN, Irancell would become the biggest internet provider giant in the country.
*Long-Term Evolution Time-Division Duplex (LTE-TDD), also referred to as TDD LTE, is a 4G telecommunications technology and standard co-developed by an international coalition of companies, including China Mobile, Datang Telecom, Huawei, ZTE, Nokia Solutions and Networks, Qualcomm, Samsung, and ST-Ericsson. It is one of the two mobile data transmission technologies of the Long-Term Evolution (LTE) technology standard, the other being Frequency-Division Long-Term Evolution (LTE-FDD).