Iran Mobile Operators Statistics After MNP Implementation
According to a research by the Deputy of Strategic Planning and Control of Iran’s ICT Ministry, mobile penetration in the country has reached to 98.9% in September since the 97.59% in June 2016. During this period of time, Mobile Number Portability (MNP) got implemented in Iran.
Tasnim news reported that according to this report, the total number of issued sim cards in the country is over 150 million, though only 78.5 million were active up until September 2016. This indicates that the mobile penetration in the country is now 98.9%.
Iran Mobile Operators Market Share
In September 2016, the market share for the main 3 mobile operators of the country, Hamrah-e Aval, Irancell and Rightel was 58%,39.5%, and 2.5% respectively. In June 2016 these statistics were 57%, 40%, and 3% respectively.
Iran Mobile Operators subscribers
Statistics show that Iran’s first mobile operator, Hamrah-e Aval (MCI) had 45.6 million active subscribers and a penetration rate of 57.25% until September 2016. The penetration rate for this mobile operator has seen a 1.23% growth since June 2016. Hamrah-e Aval has issued 64.7 million numbers and of which 14.7 million are subscription based and 30.8 million are prepaid, users.
The second mobile operator, Irancell has over 31.2 million active subscribers with a penetration rate of 39.19%. Up until September 2016, Irancell has been able to attract 312 thousand subscription-based and 30.9 million prepaid users.
The third mobile operator, Rightel which provides the most stable 3G internet connection in the country has sold 6.6 million sim cards until September 2016. Of this number, Rightel only has 1 million and 957 thousand active users, while 47 thousand are subscription based and 1 million and 910 thousand are prepaid/data sim card users. Rightel’s penetration rate has been stated to be 2.46%.
State of Mobile Number Portability (MNP)
Mobile Number Portability is not a new service in the world but this feature officially got introduced to Iranians in August 2016. MNP basically enables subscribers to change their carrier while keeping their old number. Prior to that, the service was in its beta phase for some time giving the carriers the time to fix the possible issues with this service. Now according to this statistics, from June to September 2016 where MNP was implemented in Iran, Irancell and Rightel lost their market share by 0.5% while Hamrah-e Aval (MCI) saw a 1% increase in its shares.
The three mobile operators are heavily advertising their services, especially the quality and quantity of their mobile internet in hopes of attracting more users from other operators.