How the Ministry of Communications supports native messengers – Mehr News Agency Iran and world’s news

According to the Mehr correspondent, the expansion of the role of social networks in information exchange in recent years, emphasized the issue of supporting domestic social networks, and based on this, the framework for supporting domestic messengers was approved by the Supreme Council of Cyberspace in 1996. In this decree, tasks were specified for several agencies, most of which are related to the Ministry of Communications.

In this regard, the provision of free technical infrastructure and bandwidth for the information traffic generated by these internal networks, as well as the provision of facilities in the form of a loan of 5 billion Tomans, were among the measures taken to support local messengers. .

The ups and downs of native messengers

In November of this year, Issa Zarepour, the Minister of Communications of the 13th government, said in a meeting with the managers of domestic messengers: “The messengers, with all the ups and downs of the previous years, have reached a desirable point and believed in their abilities.”

He stressed that there are serious challenges in the growth of messengers, one of the most important of which is the challenge of “self-disbelief”: as long as the virus of “self-disbelief” exists, there is no possibility of progress and success in any field.

According to the Minister of Communications, in order to reach the desired point in domestic messengers, the quality of domestic services must first be improved and it must be able to compete with foreign messengers.

After this meeting, and in December 1400, following a request for re-deferral of some domestic media outlets that had difficulty repaying their preferred loans, the Minister of Communications agreed to a six-month deferral of their loans.

It was said that Issa Zarepour’s move was in line with the policies of the 13th government to support domestic messengers and to create more opportunities for the growth of these messengers.

Now, the Supreme Council of Cyberspace, in its meeting on January 19, 1400, has once again emphasized the development of domestic platforms, especially in the field of business, information and media.

In this meeting, chaired by Seyed Ebrahim Raisi, considering the increasing role and importance of cyberspace in people’s lives and businesses, the issue of developing internal platforms and the need to remove existing barriers in this field was discussed and the Ministry of Communications was appointed. Submit its executive plan, along with its timeline, to the High Council for Cyberspace to remove obstacles to the development of internal platforms.

Ministry of Communications policy to strengthen native messengers

Mohammad Khansari, Deputy Minister of Communications and Head of the Information Technology Organization of Iran, in an interview with Mehr, described the plans of the Ministry of Communications to strengthen and support native messengers and said: The policy of strengthening native messengers is known as the National Cyberspace Center. And the Ministry of Communications is responsible for part of this policy according to the National Information Network Master Plan document.

Emphasizing that the national division of labor has been done in the form of the requirements document and the macro-architecture of the national information network, and the duties of the Ministry of Communications are clear about it, he continued: It has been assigned to the Information Technology Organization of Iran and we have a duty to follow it.

Emphasizing that native messengers are now in the initial stages of growth, the Deputy Minister of Communications said: “Normally, in order for native messengers to be widely used in the country, competitive advantages must be based on the capacities that There is in the government as well as e-government, let them.

Noting that we can provide good information to native messengers, Khansari added: “For example, we are now seeing a lot of people using native maps in the field of applications. Why do users use this tool? The answer is obvious, because these applications meet people’s needs in terms of data. These maps include information such as corona vaccination centers and updated traffic information. This is a competitive advantage over similar external services with native maps.

The head of Iran’s Information Technology Organization said: “In the field of messengers, the program of the Ministry of Communications is quite clear in line with the tasks assigned to it by the National Cyberspace Center.” We must consolidate all the capacities in the country and provide better service to the people. This service can be better provided in the form of using native messengers. This strengthens native messengers as a competitive advantage over similar foreign counterparts.

Khansari, emphasizing that in the Information Technology Organization, we are pursuing programs related to strengthening the field of messaging, regarding the facilities that will be allocated to native messengers, said: We follow and the program to strengthen the messaging networks is in the form of the same issue and is not out of these tasks.

“So far, facilities in the form of loans or server capacities in internal data centers have been considered for native messengers, and we are still pursuing these tasks,” he said. However, it seems that the market for native messengers will expand with the diversification of services and the increase of infrastructure capacities in the service layer.

In response to the question about the current situation of native messengers, the Deputy Minister of Communications said: “The task of evaluating native messengers has been assigned by the National Cyberspace Center to the Radio Regulatory Authority, and the result of this evaluation should be Announce the National Cyberspace or Regulatory Center.

He pointed out that many efforts have been made to expand native messengers and these messengers have been successful in some areas, adding: “Of course, we need to further strengthen these media and therefore in the form of services that are valuable to the people.” It adds, we can shape this reinforcement. If the service needs of the people are met on the basis of native messengers, these messengers will be more attractive for users to use.

Khansari said: “In many parts of the world, government services are integrated in native messengers and in a way, native messengers are known as service tools.”

In response to the question that these services are supposed to be the same e-government services that will be offered on the platform of messengers, he said: “Despite many efforts, we in e-government have not yet reached the point of maturity to be able to provide government services.” Take care of messengers with accurate, scalable and suitable tools. For this reason, how to convert messengers to service tools is under review and our program. This is a task from the National Cyberspace Center and meeting the needs of the people, which we will do.

In this regard, Mehr News Agency, in a correspondence with the National Cyberspace Center, asked for an explanation of this center according to the 2017 resolution of the Supreme Cyberspace Council regarding the policies and actions of messengers regarding the status of native messengers, user usage, number of memberships and traffic. They are exchanged, and asked the center to report on the implementation and operation of this resolution after 4 years, but so far the center has not answered these questions.