Civil Development Commission Member: Parliament Will Summon the Minister of Communications over Expensive Internet / The Minister and the President Must Be Accountable / The Condition for a Price Increase Was Quality Improvement and Reduced Filtering

According to KhabarOnline, Mostafa Pourdehghan, about the renewed decision to increase internet tariffs and why every now and then this decision is taken by the operators, while the quality of the internet is by no means desirable, said: Now the minister of communications must come and answer; Mr. President must answer; but the point that exists is that the government itself brings about all these matters. It raises all the reasons for the expensiveness, for example the increase in the price of equipment.

As ILNA reports, this member of the Industries and Mines Commission of the Islamic Consultative Assembly stated: All this equipment is imported; well, all of it is calculated at the dollar rate, and who brings about the rate increase? The government is bringing about this increase. We ask the Telecommunications Company why it has become more expensive; they say the dollar rate has gone up. We say, who raised the dollar rate? They say the government itself did it.

He continued: The government brings about all these matters, and it seems the government is not aware of these severe pressures on the generation that in any case uses the internet. This generation is mostly the youth, who use this space for the economic matters or the everyday matters of their lives.

This member of the Islamic Consultative Assembly emphasized: Unfortunately, there is not even one person to come and give an explanation to the people; even to write two words on what the reason for this increase was. That on Friday morning, like the gasoline affair, they come and increase the internet tariff by 40 percent; what position can the people take in these conditions that they can defend? What protest can they have anymore?

He emphasized: This matter will be followed up again by us in the parliament, and as soon as the parliament opens, we will invite the minister and we expect an explanation, to see what plan exists so that now that the tariffs have at least increased, the quality also becomes better, and to see what measures will be taken in this field, or at least that they reduce the filtering.

Pourdehghan, in response to whether in this recent period, after the war, the commission has entered the discussion of internet quality and filtering, said: No, after the war this matter was not followed up, because in any case the conditions became special conditions.

He recalled: We were following up these matters before the war; we were pursuing the discussion of reopening the applications and removing filtering, that is, reducing filtering; because when filtering decreases, many of the people's infrastructure matters also become better.

This member of the Islamic Consultative Assembly said: On the other hand, we also agreed with the price increase, on the condition that alongside it, quality would increase and filtering would also decrease. Yes, the operator too, on this path, could have bought better equipment to provide better infrastructure and the tariffs would increase; but this process became one-sided; that is, the price increase was carried out, but those conditions that we set in the commission and the commitments that were given, unfortunately none of them was carried out.