Since 1991, Iran's satellite connection to the international network has been established though three satellite earth stations, six antennas and approximately 1000 channels.
Iran's largest satellite station is the Inmarsat land earth station at Boumehen, near Tehran, operating in A and C bands which routes calls beamed from mobiles via the Indian Ocean satellite to and from terrestrial telephone networks. The station was inaugurated by President Rafsanjani on May 20, 1995, and was billed as the largest satellite telecommunication center in the Middle East at the time. It is located 35 kilometers northeast of Tehran, and serves 1,250 telephone channels and international telex lines. The satellite center enables a range of domestic communication and signal dispatch as well as extended access to direct telephone and telex links with sea bound vessels in Europe, Africa and Asia.
Another large station is in Astarabad, Hamedan.
A Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) signed on November 24, 1998 between Inmarsat (the global mobile satellite communications operator) and Thuraya (the Middle Eastern organization building a regional satellite system due for launch in 2000) provides a framework for discussing the development of Mobile Satellite Services (MSS) in the Middle East. According to this MOU it is forecast that Inmarsat Band M services will also be provided in the Bumehen station.