<
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/jan/28/iran-appears-to-ease-internet-blackout>
"Iranian authorities appear to have relaxed – but not removed – internet
restrictions, in what experts say is a sign of the mounting costs of the most
severe internet blackout the regime has ever imposed.
“There seems to be a real patchwork of connectivity. I think if most people
have access, it’s some kind of degraded service,” said Doug Madory, the
director of internet analysis at Kentik. “It’s almost like they’re developing a
content blocking system by trial and error.”
On Wednesday, previously unavailable Iranian Telegram channels came back
online. Data from Cloudflare and Kentik show that an uneven restoration of
internet traffic to Iran began on Tuesday morning – reaching about 60% of
pre-shutdown levels at one point. The pattern of this internet traffic did not
follow a smooth curve, Madory said, but rather had jagged peaks, indicating
authorities were likely continuing to throttle connections.
A report from Filterwatch, an organisation monitoring Iran’s internet traffic,
suggests that certain services, such as Google, Bing and ChatGPT, are now
available to some users on a province-to-province basis, but many are unstable
and many social media and messaging platforms remain unusable.
Iran’s internet shutdown began on 8 January, after nearly two weeks of
escalating anti-government protests. The blackout has become one of the
defining features of what may be the bloodiest weeks in Iran’s recent history.
It has helped obscure extreme violence against Iran’s population, with accounts
of mass burials and truckloads of bodies filtering out of the country only
sporadically, and often days late, through journalists, activists and a few
Telegram channels. It has also likely cost Iranian authorities a great deal of
money due to lost economic output, with whole sectors of the economy unable to
work.
Despite the regime’s efforts to whitelist certain websites and fine-tune their
internet blockade, Iranian authorities have still said the shutdown has cost
them up to $36m each day, according to a recent estimate by a government
minister. This is on a par with previous research that has estimated the cost
of various global internet blackouts to be hundreds of millions of dollars. The
OECD put the cost of Egypt’s 2011 internet shutdown during the height of Tahrir
protests at $90m."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
