Page 64 - IRANRptOct22

Iran approves regulation to spur smartphone production
Iran said to shut out social media users by blocking sent verification codes
Iran’s broadband subscription population coverage at 128% says regulator
blacking out conducted by officials, Google.com’s homepage offers a page for downloading a virtual private network (VPN) backed by the global giant. VPNs disguise the details of the computer accessing the internet.
Iran’s digital economy has been hit severely by the internet disruptions. Addressing the situation, Iran’s Minister of the Economy, Ehsan Khandouzi, said that the government would move to refund e-commerce and other impacted businesses with “tax incentives”.
Iran's Cabinet of Ministers has approved a motion to direct import duty collected on mobile phones valued at over $600 to local production, Digiato has reported.
The financial boost for domestic mobile phone production and microelectronics is to be channelled through the research and development support fund for advanced industries. One difficulty is that officials in Iran have been using dubious exchange rate calculations, based on official rates, to block the imports of luxury goods. Those goods include smartphones with list values of more than $600. Thus, the fund may not see any capital generated by import duties if this situation continues.
Battered by cheap Chinese and Korean imports, Iranian mobile phone producers have struggled to keep up with fast-paced developments in global technology. They have tended to focus their efforts on special-feature phones and low-end smartphones.
Local research shows that despite Apple not having any representation in Iran, its iPhone remains in the top five of popular phone brands in the country. Officials hope that, backed by new measures such as the channelling of accrued import duties, Iranian mobile phone makers can carve out a 20% share of Iran's smartphone market.
Iranian authorities have reportedly blocked mobile phone users from receiving two-step verification codes on their devices in a move aimed at further limiting social media access and filtering access to information. Several social media users reported on August 17 that text messages containing Telegram, Twitter and WhatsApp login codes were filtered by cell phone operators in Iran and thus were not receivable, Radio Farda reported. Under the situation, if a user in Iran is logged out of one of the applications, logging back in again is impossible. There were some reports, however, that Telegram was enabling phone calls to provide access codes to users.
Tehran has been accused of covertly beginning to implement “cyberspace protection” legislation that provides control of Iran's internet gateways to the armed forces. It also criminalises usage 0f virtual private networks (VPNs) that mask internet users’ locations, giving them the security to view blocked websites. The bill is not supposed to have progressed beyond a parliamentary committee review.
Authoritarians around the world have learnt lessons from Iran on how to throttle or cut internet connectivity to a city or region, or even nationwide, during sensitive times such as anti-regime protests.
In September last year, an Iranian Statistics Center report concluded that 45mn Iranians are still members of Telegram and send 15bn messages on the social network every day, Radio Farda noted.
Broadband subscriptions in Iran, a country of 85mn, numbered 108.87mn in the three months to late June, according to figures from Iran’s telecoms regulator CRA. The population coverage of 128% was up by one percentage point since the previous quarter.
The subscriptions included nearly 97.84mn mobile broadband subscriptions
64 IRAN Country Report October 2022 www.intellinews.com