Telecommunications in Iraq - Internet

Internet

Under the government of Saddam Hussein, Internet access was tightly controlled and very few people were thought to be online; in 2002 it was estimated that only 25,000 Iraqis used the Internet. With his ouster, Internet usage has become commonplace. Uruklink, originally the sole Iraqi Internet service provider, now faces competition from other ISPs, including broadband satellite Internet access services from both Middle East and European VSAT hubs. The premier military telecom service provider in Iraq is Ts 2. Since 2006 several more companies emerged to provide options to individual Iraqis that made Internet access more affordable, albeit with less bandwidth. One such business is Advanced Technology Systems-Iraq

As of January 2010, The top 4 ISPs in Iraq's capital city of Baghdad are: MASARAT telecom, offering speeds up to 40 megabits and it is the fastest internt in Iraq " Earthlink which provides a download speed of up to 5.0 megabits per second (Mb/s) in off-peak times and a download/upload speed of 1024/128 kilobits per second (Kb/s) at peak utilization; (Rose Telecom) provides speeds up to 4/0.7 Mbit/s in off-peak times and 512/128 kbit/s at peak; /s in off-peak times; and ATS-Iraq, which targets the home and single user demographic. Because of the reduction in usage and capability of the land line infrastructure since 2004, all Iraqi ISPs use wireless technology to provide Internet service to their customers. The Iraqi people await the repair and equipping of the country's telecommunications infrastructure to allow for land-based Internet access methods, such as Cable and DSL. As of 2010, an estimated 5 million Iraqis have access the Internet. The DNS system's top-level country code for Iraq is .iq

Sources: BBC, Uruklink