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WEEKLY NEWSLETTER
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Iran
Index
Reza Shah emphasized telecommunications as a focus of
modernization in the 1930s. Telecommunications was reemphasized in
the 1960s as part of Mohammad Reza Shah's
White Revolution (see Glossary).
Development was financed by a consortium of
international firms that established satellite links for Iran's
telecommunications. By the late 1970s, Iran had telegraph,
television, and data communications capabilities. The National
Iranian Radio and Television Organization had sufficient television
transmission capability and enough relay stations to reach about 60
percent of the population. Iran had 1.7 million television sets in
1976 and 2.1 million by 1984.
The principal complaint about the telecommunications system
remained the average citizen's inability to obtain a telephone.
Although the number of telephone lines increased from 400,000 to
800,000 between 1972 and 1977, hundreds of thousands of customers
waited as long as two years for a telephone. By 1980 the number of
telephones had increased to about 1.2 million, and by 1986 to 1.5
million. About 3,000 of 70,000 rural communities had telephones in
1987, compared with 300 in 1979. To meet the demand for telephones,
authorities decided to seek local production of digital equipment,
and in May 1987 the British company Plessey Major Systems was
negotiating a US$166.3 million contract to supply the Ministry of
Posts, Telephones, and Telegraph with almost 1 million lines of
telephone exchange equipment. Automatic telephone facilities were
also included in project planning.
As a result of the opening of additional microwave links
between Tehran, Ankara, and Karachi, international service
generally improved in the early 1980s. Temporary disruption was
caused, however, by an Iraqi attack on a communications
installation near Hamadan on June 8, 1986.
Data as of December 1987
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