Internet connection on your phone in Iran

If you are an Internet addict whose best friend is Google, prepare yourself to get along with Iran’s slow internet. Nowadays many places such as restaurants and coffee shops or even malls offer Wi-Fi connection. You can also use internet cafes if you are desperately looking for a port to the web.

For travelers who spend most of their time on roads, mobile internet is suggested. There are four Iranian mobile phone operators available in Iran; Hamrah-e-Avval (First Operator), Irancell, Rightel, and Taliya.

How to have Internet connection on your phone in Iran

For a short stay in Iran, we recommend you to buy a prepaid sim card from one of the providers. Irancell and Rightel provide better internet connection in contrary with Taliya which has the weakest connectivity.

Buying a prepaid sim card is easy. You only need to have a copy of your passport to take to a mobile shop and acquire your sim card, unless you do not want to face registration technicalities, you can buy it from official branches that you can find almost everywhere, even in the airport. Do not forget to ask the salesman to activate it.

Mobile call and Internet prices are close between the operators. The average cost for domestic calls is 80 Tomans (800 IRR or 0.03 USD) per minute. The prices for a prepaid Irancell SIM is around 5 USD and Hamrah-e Avval costs about 10 USD. You also can buy monthly plans to select how much high-speed data you need with a better price.

Although the connection is faster on Irancell and Rightel, network coverage is better on Irancell. It is noteworthy to say that all the operators support 4G LTE. So with access to LTE coverage, you can have high-speed bandwidth around 800-1200 Kbps.

Your SIM card may need to be punched out into a smaller size. Just ask the salesman, they can cut it for you.

Adding credits

To add credit to your prepaid phone, you can find credit cards in the amount of 1,000, 2,000, 5,000, and 10,000 Tomans in every corner. All booth that selling newspaper or convenience store has it. after buying and scratching the surface of its concealed code, you can enter it on your phone following one of these depending on your operator:

Every operators’ charging method can be seen under its logo.

Calling abroad

To see how much a call to your country costs, you can check it on your operator’s website. here is the page on Irancell and Hamrah-e Avval. But it is strongly recommended to avoid direct calls and roaming costs and instead using applications, such as WhatsApp, Viber, or Skype.

Contract cell phones

Additionally, it should be mentioned if your handset is a contract phone, you may need to inform your operator before the travel to Iran to make using Iranian SIM cards available on your handset. Iranian operators run on GSM and LTE, so if your handset does not support LTE and only support CDMA, you may have technicalities. If you can change network mode on your handset, it will be OK for you.

Censorship

Some websites and social networks such as Twitter, Facebook, and Flickr are blocked in Iran. You can get around the smart filter by VPNs and proxies to connect with your loved ones.