Iran’s electricity company Tavanir is planning to run fiber optic cables to the home alongside its power network across the country as it seeks to install a new generation of electricity meters while enabling communication service providers to offer faster internet connections.
The official IRNA news agency said in a Thursday report that Tavanir, the state-controlled utility and a subsidiary of Iran’s Ministry of Energy, had picked a contractor for the project that would see every home in Iran connected to its high-speed fiber network.
“The main objective of the Ministry of Energy is to realize the fiber-optic-to-home project,” said Mostafa Rajabi, a spokesman of Tavanir, adding that the project had been finalized a long time ago after two ministries of energy and communications reached a deal on the issue.
Rajabi said that Tavanir plans to use the network for connecting smart electricity meters that are planned to for homes across Iran while telecom providers could also use the network to improve their services.
The official said the entire length of the fiber network in Iran would be around 30,000 kilometers.
He said the project would finish sooner than planned if Iran’s ministry of communications, which has its own program for laying fiber optic cables across Iran, engages in more cooperation with Tavanir.
Official statements in early 2017 showed that Iran’s energy ministry used a 22,000-kilometr fiber network for grounding and communication in high voltage installations, alongside a fiber network of 130,000 kilometers that was used for downstream electricity distribution.
Authorities said at the time that telecoms service providers had access to 18,000 kilometers of the network set up by the utility service.