Iran appears to ease internet blackout as cost of shutdown mounts

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.Iran internet use graphA 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.Nationwide protests against failing economic policies started in Tehran’s Grand Bazaar in late December. Photograph: MAHSA/Middle East Images/AFP/Getty ImagesDespite 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.A report from an Iranian news outlet, confirmed by Iranian digital rights researchers, describes Iranian CEOs gathering in the dining hall of the Tehran Chamber of Commerce this week to access the internet – with all of their activity monitored by the government.Demand was so great that each businessperson was restricted to half an hour of access. One described the environment as “like an internet cafe from the 1980s or a university campus”.Two weeks ago, Iranian authorities appeared determined to continue the blackout for some time, perhaps indefinitely, with a government spokesperson reportedly saying the internet would be restricted until at least Nowruz, the Persian new year, on 20 March.Madory said authorities apppeared to be adjusting the shutdown, but not with an intention to end it. “It’s definitely not restored to pre-8 January levels,” he said. “Every day is different. Even within a day, it’s not consistent. It appears like they’re just developing this on the fly.”