Communications in Afghanistan is under the control of the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology (MCIT). It has rapidly expanded after the Karzai administration was formed in late 2001, and has embarked on wireless companies, internet, radio stations and television channels.
The Syrian Ministry of Communications retains governmental authority over the internet in Syria. Prior to the Syrian civil war, telecommunications in Syria were slowly moving towards liberalization, with a number of licenses awarded and services launched in the Internet service provision market. The initiative reflected the government's change in attitude towards liberalization, following its promise to the European Union to liberalize markets by 2010. All other forms of fixed-line communications are provided by the state-owned operator, Syrian Telecom (STE).
Iran's telecommunications industry is almost entirely state-owned, dominated by the Telecommunication Company of Iran (TCI). Fixed-line penetration in 2004 was relatively well-developed by regional standards, standing at 22 lines per 100 people, higher than Egypt with 14 and Saudi Arabia with 15, although behind the UAE with 27. Iran had more than 1 mobile phone per inhabitant by 2012.
Network neutrality, often referred to as net neutrality, is the principle that Internet service providers (ISPs) must treat all Internet communications equally, offering users and online content providers consistent rates irrespective of content, website, platform, application, type of equipment, source address, destination address, or method of communication. Net neutrality was advocated for in the 1990s by the presidential administration of Bill Clinton in the United States. Clinton's signing of the Telecommunications Act of 1996, an amendment to the Communications Act of 1934, set a worldwide example for net neutrality laws and the regulation of ISPs.
Mobilink was the trade name of Pakistan Mobile Communications Limited (PMCL), a mobile operator in Pakistan providing a range of prepaid and postpaid voice and data telecommunication services to both individual and corporate subscribers. In 2017, Warid Pakistan merged with Mobilink to form Jazz, under which the company now operates. Mobilink's head office was in Islamabad, and its last president and CEO was Aamir Ibrahim, who became the CEO of Jazz.
Bharti Airtel Limited, commonly known as Airtel, is an Indian multinational telecommunications services company based in New Delhi. It operates in 18 countries across South Asia and Africa, as well as the Channel Islands. Currently, Airtel provides 5G, 4G and LTE Advanced services throughout India. Currently offered services include fixed-line broadband, and voice services depending upon the country of operation. Airtel had also rolled out its Voice over LTE (VoLTE) technology across all Indian telecom circles. It is the second largest mobile network operator in India and the second largest mobile network operator in the world. Airtel was named India's 2nd most valuable brand in the first ever Brandz ranking by Millward Brown and WPP plc.
Internet in India began in 1986 and was initially available only to the educational and research community. General public access to the internet in India began on 15 August 1995. By 2023, India had more than 900 million Internet users. It is reported that in 2022 an average mobile Internet consumption in India was 19.5 GB per month and the mobile data usage per month rose from 4.5 exabytes in 2018 to 14.4 exabytes in 2022.
Internet in Afghanistan is available in all of its 34 provinces, and is used by over 9 million people as of 2022. The internet officially became available in 2002 during the presidency of Hamid Karzai. Prior to that year, it was prohibited because the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan believed that it may be used to broadcast obscene, immoral and anti-Islamic material, and because the few internet users at the time could not be easily monitored as they obtained their telephone lines from neighboring Pakistan.
Wikipedia Zero was a project by the Wikimedia Foundation to provide access to Wikipedia free of charge on mobile phones via zero-rating, particularly in developing markets. The objective of the program was to facilitate access to free knowledge for low-income pupils and students, by means of waiving the network traffic cost. With 97 operators in over 72 countries, it was estimated that access to Wikipedia was provided to more than 800 million people through the program. The program ended in 2018.
3G mobile telephony was relatively slow to be adopted globally. In some instances, 3G networks do not use the same radio frequencies as 2G so mobile operators must build entirely new networks and license entirely new frequencies, especially so to achieve high data transmission rates. Other delays were due to the expenses of upgrading transmission hardware, especially for UMTS, whose deployment required the replacement of most broadcast towers. Due to these issues and difficulties with deployment, many carriers delayed acquisition of these updated capabilities.
Internet.org is a partnership between social networking services company Meta Platforms and six companies that plans to bring affordable access to selected Internet services to less developed countries by increasing efficiency, and facilitating the development of new business models around the provision of Internet access. The app delivering these services was renamed Free Basics in September 2015. As of April 2018, 100 million people were using internet.org.
Google Free Zone was a global initiative undertaken by the Internet company Google in collaboration with mobile phone-based Internet providers, whereby the providers waive data (bandwidth) charges for accessing select Google products such as Google Search, Gmail, and Google+. In order to use this service, users were required to have a Google account and a phone that had access to an internet connection.
Facebook for SIM, also called LinqUs Facebook for SIM, is a client/server SIM application developed by international digital security company Gemalto that enabled people to access Facebook using the SMS protocol on their mobile phones, without needing a data plan. Facebook cooperated closely with Gemalto in the development of the product. Carriers that were partnering with Gemalto to offer this service included Entel in Chile, Tigo in Colombia, and Telecom Personal in Argentina.
Twitter Zero is an initiative undertaken by social networking service company Twitter in collaboration with mobile phone-based Internet providers, whereby the providers waive data (bandwidth) charges—so-called "zero-rate"—for accessing Twitter on phones when using a stripped-down text-only version of the website. The images could be loaded by using the official Twitter app. The stripped-down version is available only through providers who have entered the agreement with Twitter.
Zero-rating is the practice of providing Internet access without financial cost under certain conditions, such as by permitting access to only certain websites or by subsidizing the service with advertising or by exempting certain websites from the data allowance.
Mechanisms for establishing rules ensuring Net neutrality in India, are at present mainly enforced by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI). At present, there are no specific legislation regarding Net Neutrality in India.
Airtel India commonly known as Airtel, is the second largest provider of mobile telephony and third largest provider of fixed telephony in India, and is also a provider of broadband and subscription television services. The brand is operated by several subsidiaries of Bharti Airtel, with Bharti Hexacom and Bharti Telemedia providing broadband fixed line services and Bharti Infratel providing telecom passive infrastructure service such as telecom equipment and telecom towers. Currently, Airtel provides 5G, 4G and 4G+ services all over India. Currently offered services include fixed-line broadband, and voice services depending upon the country of operation. Airtel had also rolled out its VoLTE technology across all Indian telecom circles.
Airtel Zero was a platform launched on 6 April 2015 in India by Bharti Airtel, a multinational telecommunications service company across South Asia and, at the time, the largest cellular service provider in India, with 192.22 million subscribers. As per reports, Airtel Zero was a platform through which Airtel would have offered users free access to certain mobile applications and services from companies who had signed up with Airtel.
Net neutrality is the principle that governments should mandate Internet service providers to treat all data on the Internet the same, and not discriminate or charge differently by user, content, website, platform, application, type of attached equipment, or method of communication. For instance, under these principles, internet service providers are unable to intentionally block, slow down or charge money for specific websites and online content.
