On Tuesday, Iranian officials spoke to the Iranian media and confirmed that a government organization – Iran Telecommunication Research Center – has four Blockchain projects in progress that have looked at using Blockchain for policy making, threat management and business use cases for Iran. Further, they announced that a project at Sharif University, funded by Iran, developed a taxi app for consumers using Blockchain which launched an ICO already.
The Iran Telecommunication Research Center is interesting for another reason – according to its own website, it facilitated the introduction of Ericsson’s 5G to Iran in 2017, and tested 5G for government officials (see the photo attached from the Ericsson event in Tehran of a military aircraft with 5G on the wings). Iran’s Irancell and Ericsson signed an agreement for 5G in Iran in 2017 to make it available in Iran by 2020. Irancell is a government owned and controlled organization, said to be allegedly controlled, if not owned, by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.