TEHRAN (Dispatches) - Iran’s second mobile operator MTN Irancell has launched a first commercial 5G internet service in the country in a location in the capital Tehran.
The operator said on its website that the service had come on line earlier in the day in a ceremony attended by Iran’s telecoms minister Muhammad Javad Azari.
It said the site located in a park in northern Tehran would be a first in the country where people can have commercial access to the fifth generation internet.
MTN Irancell, the largest data operator in Iran, had already rolled out non-commercial 5G services in three locations in Tehran.
The operator said data transfer speed over the 5G network launched on Tuesday was 3-3.5 gigabits per second.
In a tweet on Monday, Azari had said that he would open the first site with public access to 5G, adding that three other such services would come on line in the next few weeks in the cities of Mashhad, in east, and in Shiraz and Kish, in south of Iran.
Iranian government data shows that the country has an internet penetration rate of over 90 percent for a population of more than 84 million people.
The top telecoms regulatory body in Iran said on Monday that it would hold an auction to allocate a frequency band for provision of 5G services.