During a press conference held at MTN Irancell headquarter, Iran’s first full 5G network test was carried out .
According to Irancell Public Relations, a complete (end to end) network consisting of 5G radio and core network has been tested for the first time in Iran, on Wednesday, 20 September 2017 at the course of the 5G Economic Opportunities Forum attended by the Minister of Communications and Information Technology, MTN Irancell Managing Director, Iran Ericsson CEO, Swedish Ambassador to Tehran, and a number of deputies and managers of the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology and Irancell and Ericsson companies.
31.5 million people are using Irancell 3G and 4G
Reviewing the company’s network development trend, Irancell Managing Director, Alireza Ghalambor Dezfuli said: Irancell's 2G network has 86% population coverage, that is 3373 towns and villages and 49.5 million subscribers.
He continued: currently 31 million 3G-enabled handsets are being used in Irancell network and 2,549 cities and villages are under 3G coverage with 23 million subscribers using Irancell 3G services.
According to Dezfouli the number of mobile phones supporting Irancell’s fourth-generation network equal 11 million. He also noted 1,565 cities and villages are under 4G coverage and 5.5 million subscribers are using Irancell 4G.
Irancell CEO announced that 250,000 subscribers are using Irancell TD-LTE and this service is available in 159 cities. More than 366 cities are also under Irancell 4.5G coverage.
5G in Line with the Resistive economy
Referring to 1404 horizon and Development Prospects in Line with the Resistive Economy Document, restated the document’s components as: creating a dynamic atmosphere, improving the macroeconomic indicators, the ability to withstand threatening factors, reliance on local capacities, jihadi approaches, focusing on the people, the security of strategic and essential elements, reduction of dependency on oil industry, etc.
Irancell's Chief Executive Officer addressed the company's strategies as quantitative and qualitative data network development and maintaining and improving the current status of Irancell in this area, developing Irancell's network as the fastest access layer to the National Information Network and the maximum use of the platforms created to meet the goals of e-Government to grow content production and develop service delivery (payment, education, health, transportation, etc.), the development of the IOE / IOT as intermediary between network and market needs, direct investment in active companies in order to accelerate market and home market growth and full support of the internet-based start-ups from the day they start until they enter the market officially.
He then added: in order to achieve the above goals and get ready for the revolution that will happen globally and in Iran once 5G enters ICT and in order to better benefit from the past experiences regarding 3G and 4G networks, while simultaneously developing its data network from 2016, Irancell began the necessary measures and studies to maintain its coherence with the global trend and in addition to reviewing the summary of the role of 5G in the economy of the country, tested an End-to-End 5G network in cooperation with Ericsson.
Iran’s first full 5G network test carried out by Irancell
Irancell Core Network Planning General Manager – Arash Behgoo – explained the 5G network standards, saying: according to 3GPP standards, the average speed, maximum speed, network capacity, spectrum efficiency, energy usage efficiency, mobility, delay and user density have some standards that canoe be achieved in 4G network.
Presenting the 5G road map, he added that Iran is one of the few countries that followed the global standard and could test a full 5G network between 2017 and 2018.
“76 percent of the world's largest operators have tried to fully test the 5G network, but just some of them have been successful. Irancell has been one of the successful companies in this regard”, said Behgoo.
Irancell Core Network Planning General Manager referred to some advantages of the 5G network such as faster speeds, lower delays, higher user densities and numbers, more sustainable network and said that these benefits would lead to critical services management, faster access to broadband everywhere and the massive use of the internet of things.
On 5G usage he also added that this technology can be of great help on health, e-government, transportation, energy and financial issues and it is anticipated that in the year 2035, 5G would have a $ 16 trillion effect on the world economy.
Also, regarding the industrial IoT ecosystem he continued: according to the forecasts, by 2020, more than 220 billion sensors and 38.5 billion devices will be using this generation.
He also continued, by 2020, about 85 percent of the world's top companies will provide a general API and mobile apps will have a download rate of up to 300 billion times. By this year, the volume of data consumed would be up to 2.4 exabytes per month.