Internet usage rises 3.5 times during this year’s Iranian new year holidays comparing to last year. There has also been a massive reduction in the amount of SMS sent this year according to Tasnim News.

Traditionally billions of text messages (SMS) were transferred during the first days of the Persian new year in form of new year wishes. According to the head of Iran’s Radio Regulations & Communications Organization, a total of 7,683,699,229 text messages have been sent in the first 7 days of the Persian new year in form of SMS. This number has seen massive reduction as most messages are being sent through free messaging applications that use the internet with Telegram having the largest market share.

There has been 3.5x growth in mobile Internet usage during the Persian new year holidays announced by the Iranian communication regulatory. The amount of data transferred was about 8 Terabytes according to the same source. The fast growth of 3G and 4G accessibility has been reported as the main reason of this growth.

Ministry of communications & information technology had also invested heavily in provinces with high tourist attractions during Nowruz holidays to improve the mobile network accessibility. 12,000 new network antenna has been established in connecting roads to further provide internet coverage to the tourists.

Mobile operators ran full scale campaigns on limited time special Nowruz internet packages to take advantage of the growing internet needs of the holiday season. Major Iranian cities are getting access to 4G internet, and more smaller cities have wide range of 3G internet. With Norooz developments, almost every connecting road with high tourist traffic have had the minimum 2G internet connectivity to satisfy the tourist needs.

It seems that the 3.5x mobile internet growth in the Persian holiday season is an indication of advertising campaigns paying off.

The high growth in the number of smartphones in the recent year obviously had an impact for this high number of internet usage. The estimate number of activated smartphones as of now is about 40 million, meaning half of the country’s 80 million population have smartphones. Operators had a busy year expanding their internet services for this tsunami of new users.