The Iranian government’s jamming of Starlink has apparently gotten more sophisticated, degrading uploads to make it hard for users to distribute information and images of protests. “I believe that they are using some military-grade jamming tools to jam the radio frequency signals, particularly jamming any videos, any content, any reports coming out of Iran,” Ahmad Ahmadian, executive director of US-based nonprofit Holistic Resilience, told The Washington Post.
“You don’t need a global kill switch to cripple the network,” Kimberly Burke, director of government affairs at consulting firm Quilty Space, told the Post. “You just make it unstable, slow and unreliable enough that it barely even works. Think intermittent dial-up speeds.”
Internet monitoring group NetBlocks told Reuters that Starlink access is reduced but not eliminated in Iran. “It is patchy, but still there,” NetBlocks founder Alp Toker said.
Internet traffic “effectively dropped to zero”
NetBlocks has been posting updates on Mastodon, saying that Iran’s connectivity to the outside world has remained at about 1 percent of ordinary levels. “Iran has now been offline for 120 hours,” NetBlocks said today. “Despite some phone calls now connecting, there is no secure way to communicate and the general public remain cut off from the outside world.”
Cloudflare’s monitoring reached similar conclusions. “In the last few days, Internet traffic from Iran has effectively dropped to zero,” Cloudflare Head of Data Insight David Belson wrote in a blog post today.
Although connectivity was restored for brief periods on January 9, “no significant changes have been observed in Iran’s Internet traffic since January 10,” he wrote. “The country remains almost entirely cut off from the global Internet, with internal data showing traffic volumes remaining at a fraction of a percent of previous levels.”
A fundraising page for sending Starlink terminals to Iran and covering subscription costs says that “over 100,000 people in Iran are already using Starlink to bypass censorship.” Since the government can’t fully block the service, it has used bans and banking sanctions to make it “extremely difficult for users inside Iran to pay for their subscriptions,” the fundraising page says.
NasNet said today that service is now being made available for free. “After weeks of continuous efforts, negotiations, and discussions with the Starlink team and United States authorities, we have successfully provided access to Starlink for free to serve the revolution,” NasNet wrote on X, according to a translation. “All you need to do is turn on the device. Don’t forget physical camouflage, hiding the Starlink IP, and changing the wireless network name!”