Internet smuggling...deceiving consumers and the state in Iraq

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[size=52]Internet smuggling...deceiving consumers and the state in Iraq[/size]

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The phenomenon of Internet smuggling in Iraq, in which licensed companies are involved, is worsening despite the state's attempt to confront it due to huge losses to the communications sector, poor service reaching consumers, and manipulation of prices and the reality of speeds.[/size]
[size=45]- The CEO of Shams Telecom, the Internet service provider in Baghdad, Bashar Al-Zubaidi, describes Internet smuggling activities as “the epidemic that is ravaging the Iraqi communications sector,” stressing that licensed companies providing the service do not just buy capacity (an amount of data with a certain transfer speed per second). ) which it sells to the public from the Ministry of Communications, which is supposed to have a monopoly on the service, but it buys smuggled others from unlicensed parties to add them to the official capacities in order to achieve high profits from selling them to subscribers since the prices imposed by the Ministry are high.[/size]
[size=45]“The reasons for the continuing aggravation of the phenomenon, despite Iraqi governments declaring their control over it several times, are due to the absence of international access gates and the delay in implementing its project until October 2022,” as former MP Hoda Sajjad, a member of the Parliament’s Services and Reconstruction Committee, confirms, explaining. In 2019, the House of Representatives approved, within the budget law, the allocation of funds to establish access gates and were transferred to a company that did not implement them at the time. Consequently, the project’s delay resulted in a lack of control over the capacities entering the country, which is done by analyzing data and determining their quantities and the volume of smuggled smuggling outside international access gates, compared to entering. Through it.[/size]
[size=45]Iraq investigation 1[/size]
[size=45]Iraq's looted memory...lost hopes for restoring the radio and television archives.
How is smuggling done?
“Users are provided with Internet service unofficially, and of course not through the Ministry of Communications, but by unlicensed persons or companies, which obtain Internet access through several methods, including cutting a hole in the optical cable and connecting it in a professional manner with capillary wires, or through communications towers.” Illegal cover specific areas placed in remote areas, and they pass the Internet through them to subscribers,” says Aws Al-Saadi, a specialist in the digital field and director of the Technology for Peace Organization (non-profit), to Al-Araby Al-Jadeed, adding that the parties involved are individuals or companies who The smuggling process is carried out in an organized and professional manner.[/size]
[size=45]The smuggled Internet passes through routes, most notably Iran, through Diyala Governorate, east of Baghdad, and the other route from Kurdistan, as its price in the region is less expensive compared to what the Baghdad government imposes. It is usually smuggled through the Nineveh Governorates in northwestern Iraq and Kirkuk in the north, and even licensed companies offer to buy smuggled Internet. From Kurdistan, according to Al-Saadi.[/size]
[size=45]Internet capacities smuggle from Kurdistan and Iran to Iraq[/size]
[size=45]Representative Sajjad confirms the above, noting that Iraq has approximately 12 land ports and two sea ports, but the unofficial and secret ports are twice that, and they are not under the control of the Ministry of Communications, considering that the Ministry must prevent Internet smuggling and deal with agreements with neighboring countries to know the value The smuggled Internet and the size of the real one, and pointed out that it interrogated the Minister of Communications in 2015 when it obtained a document showing that Iran had provided Iraq with ten STM-1 (measurement unit for transferring data at a speed of 155 megabits per second), one of them through the ministry and the remaining nine through smuggling, confirming “This is one simple example of smuggling only from one port, which is from Iran. As for Kirkuk and Kurdistan, it happened and there is nothing wrong with it.” At that time, the revenue (profits) of STM1 was one million dollars annually, which reveals the amount of money that is wasted on Ministry because of Internet smuggling.[/size]
[size=45]But the head of the Future Iraq Foundation for Economic Studies, Engineer Manar Al-Obaidi, attributes the exacerbation of smuggling operations to the Ministry of Communications resorting to raising Internet prices to pay the salaries of its 18,000 employees, as it is a self-financing institution that has no other financing outlet other than increasing Internet prices. As for the reason? The second thing that encourages smuggling is that the frequencies and assets related to providing the service are considered the property of the government in Baghdad and are included in the process of determining the price of the service, while in Kurdistan, the Ministry of Communications’ expenses are not high compared to the central ministry, so the price is little, which encourages the smuggling process from Kurdistan to Iraq.[/size]
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