In Iran, control of the internet grows stronger
Audio 02:29
In Iran, access to the web is largely filtered or restricted by the authorities.
(Illustrative image) AFP
By: Siavosh Ghazi
3 min
For a month, the country has experienced a marked slowdown in internet speed, which has provoked criticism on social networks and in the moderate and reformist press.
Even before these problems, Iran was ranked 118th among the world's slowest internet countries.
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From our correspondent in Tehran,
The slowdown in speed affects everyone who uses the internet for their work or like schoolchildren and high school students who take online courses. Indeed, due to the coronavirus pandemic, schools are still closed and lessons take place via the internet, which considerably increases the number of users, especially at certain times of the day.
For Alireza, a 10-year-old schoolboy, who studies at home, the slowdown in the network is annoying: “
The internet is very slow.
For example, when the teacher does a dictation, it takes us an hour and a half to send it to her.
The teacher reproaches us and lowers our grade.
And when you want to use the Shad application created by the authorities for courses, it takes several attempts before you can connect to it.
We have fallen behind in class.
Before, it took an hour to send an assignment to the teacher, now it takes two or more.
The internet is really very slow.
"
The country has 14.5 million students, which significantly increases the number of users at certain times of the day.
VPNs to bypass filtering
According to the media, bandwidth has not increased for two months, that is to say since the new government came to power. However, President Ebrahim Raïssi had said, before his election, that there was no question of limiting the internet. He even said that it was necessary to facilitate access because many people use the web for their work.
For Mahyar, a young computer programmer who also works at home, the slowdown has been particularly noticeable over the past month: “
Because of the sanctions, many Iranian IP addresses are closed and we have to use VPNs
to work, which slows down the speed and when international traffic goes up like the last few weeks, we really have problems. The bandwidth has to increase every month to meet the needs which has not happened in recent times hence the current problems.
"
Access to the web is largely filtered or restricted by the authorities.
Users must install VPN-type anti-censorship software [a private network, which allows filtering to be bypassed, Editor's note] to access many foreign pages but also to access social networks such as Telegram or Twitter.
This does not prevent many managers from using these same social networks for official communications.
At the same time, consideration of a bill has been brought forward by ultra-conservative MPs to further control the internet and this worries many.
A campaign with hundreds of thousands of signatures has been launched on the internet against this bill.
But for the moment, the deputies do not want to give up anything.
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Iran
Internet