The most expensive regionally and the worst in the world .. Turtle faster than the Internet of Iraq

Salam Zidan - Baghdad

The Iraqi Ministry of Communications acknowledged the weakness of the Internet due to several factors, including rampant corruption, and weak companies equipped for service, and the absence of the vision of the ministry during the past years, as a result of political decisions and party interests.

The Internet first entered Iraq in 2000, but after the US invasion of Iraq in 2003 began to spread very significantly, with millions of Iraqis currently used, but the majority of them suffer from poor service, which affected their work.

The Internet service in Iraq is interrupted continuously, part of which depends on government decisions that stop the service on the days of final exams for fear of leaking questions or political and security developments, as happened in 2014 after the Islamic State took control of most areas of northern and western Iraq, in addition to demonstrations in Basra, Another part is due to weak Internet infrastructure.

According to local media, Iraq is losing $ 40 million a day as a result of poor Internet service or interruption, due to the cessation of business for some companies, including banks, media and others. For example, the Iraqi Trade Bank, a government bank, apologized last week to its customers on his Facebook page, for the imbalance that occurred in the ATM due to fluctuation of the Internet service, which led to the non-disbursement of funds.

Former MP Majid Shankali described the speed of the Internet in Iraq as the worst in the world, although it is one of the most expensive countries in this service.

Final mattresses
Iraq ranks at the bottom of the Internet speed, in several global indicators, while the citizen buys this bad service as described by the majority of Iraqis at very high prices when compared with the countries of the world, which caused a wave of criticism by citizens who launched campaigns on social networking sites to demand the government to improve the service .

Many small organizations spend more than $ 1,000 a month to buy Internet service from three or four companies to cope with poor service or interruption to avoid the impact of their business, as Iraq has not yet launched 4G service while the 5G service began to be used in some Arab countries, Note that telecommunications companies have not yet covered the area of ​​Iraq 3G service, as some areas still use the second generation "E".

Many reasons
Commenting on this, Minister of Communications Naim al-Rubaie said in an interview with Al Jazeera Net, that there are many reasons behind the weakness of the Internet service, including companies equipped with the service and weak infrastructure, as there are collaborators from the Ministry of Communications with these companies.

He added that the ministry is currently working to improve the Internet service and receive complaints by citizens on companies and towers equipped to take the necessary punitive measures against them, pointing out that it demanded Internet companies to reduce prices. He stressed that the poor service is due to the smuggling of Internet capacities and this impact on some business and projects.

According to the specialist in Internet journalism and entrepreneurship Mohammed al-Baidani, the small companies in Iraq suffer from a very big challenge, which is the weakness of the Internet service, which undermines its work, and limits its development.

Al-Baidhani said in an interview with Al-Jazeera Net that bad internet service is the most prominent challenge for startups, pointing out that most business owners work late at night to get better service.

He stressed that the standards adopted in the provision of citizens and companies Internet service lacks the right methods, as the sky of Iraq is a chaos in frequencies as a result of conflicts between the owners of the towers, who provide citizens with the service that gets worse and often reach less than 100 KB per second.

Al-Baidani pointed out that the poor Internet service is an obstacle to the success of the project to transform Iraq into e-government, which is still in place.

In a report, the Audit Bureau attributed the weakness of the Internet sector to the lack of legal legislation to regulate it, and the majority of companies work without approvals, as well as the spread of service towers irregularly and randomly, which leads to the impact of the service by 40%.