Tehran, Iran, July 3
By A. Shirazi - Trend:
The deputy minister of ICT and the head of Information Technology organization of Iran said the country has granted 50 billion rials of funding to its local messaging applications (each USD makes 42,500 rials).
In a bid to support local Iranian messaging applications, the government has given loans worth 50 billion rials to each of its messaging services, Nasrollah Jahangard told reporters in Tehran on July 3, Fars news agency reported.
The government felt it its duty to financially support the messaging applications as nascent start-ups and organizations, he added.
The deputy minister said one of the messaging services asked for a 1000-billion-rial loan, but we could not provide it with the large amount of funding.
Back in April, Tehran’s Culture and Media Court signed a decree for telecommunication companies to block the Telegram on the pretext of protecting national security.
In Iran, Telegram app is used by almost a half of the population.
The Supreme Council of Cyberspace has earlier set five conditions for foreign messengers to operate in Iran.
Storing and processing Iranian users’ data inside the country, complying with the rules and regulations related to the protection of users' privacy as well as responding to queries from judicial authorities are among the stated conditions.