How Iranians are communicating with the world despite internet blackout

PARIS (AFP) — Iran’s latest internet blackout has lasted more than 14 days, connectivity monitor Netblocks said Friday.

The nature of the blackout shows “this is a government-imposed measure” and not the result of damage from US and Israeli airstrikes, Netblocks research chief Isik Mater told AFP.

“It is a deliberate shutdown imposed by the authorities to suppress the flow of information and prevent further dissent,” said Raha Bahreini, Iran researcher at Amnesty International.

A lawyer in her thirties from Tehran told AFP she had “absolutely no access to information.”

“From every 10 people I know, only one has access to the internet and that’s being generous. This is driving people crazy,” she said.

“Can people in Europe or the US imagine not having internet for even one day? It’s been 15 days for us.”

The woman said accessing the internet required her to “take a risk to my life” and visit a friend with “multiple VPNs and they may work one day and not the next. The only people who can connect have Starlink.”

VPNs cost from around $35 up to $140, she said.

“I haven’t been able to talk with my family abroad more than twice during these days.”

Here are some of the ways information is still flowing in and out of Iran.

Shortwave radio

Amsterdam-based nonprofit Radio Zamaneh began shortwave broadcasts during the January protests, sending a nightly Farsi news programme from 11:00 pm Tehran time.

“It’s really difficult for the regime to jam shortwave because it’s a long-distance broadcast,” executive director Rieneke van Santen told AFP.

“People can just listen on a super cheap, small, simple radio… It’s one of those typical emergency fall-back solutions.”

Phone calls

Many with ties to Iran are still receiving landline phone calls from inside — “quite surprising” given the blackout, said Mahsa Alimardani of global rights organisation Witness.

Fearing the authorities listening in, people often avoid speaking directly about political topics, she added.

“It’s not possible to communicate about sensitive issues through these brief phone calls,” Amnesty’s Bahreini said.

The required prepaid international calling cards are expensive and often fail to provide their face value in minutes.

“You buy a phone card for 60 minutes, but in eight minutes, it’s out,” van Santen said.

“It’s really just phone calls from family members saying, after the bombing, we’re still alive.”

VPN or other internet services

Virtual private networks (VPNs) — widely-used services that encrypt internet traffic — cannot create an internet connection where none is available.

But even at around one percent of typical levels, Iran’s connectivity is “still a large figure in absolute terms,” Netblocks’ Mater said.

Iranians suspected of using VPNs since the war began have received warning text messages claiming to be from the authorities.

Before the war, millions turned to Toronto-based company Psiphon, which creates specialist tools more capable than typical “off-the-shelf” VPNs.

Offering techniques including disguising users’ data as different types of internet traffic, Psiphon “is able to evade detection more successfully,” data and insights director Keith McManamen told AFP.

With up to six million unique daily users in Iran before the latest internet shutdown, connections are now fewer than 100,000.

Only the most tech-savvy users can reach Psiphon’s network for now.

Nevertheless, “the situation is extremely dynamic. We’re seeing changes not just day to day, but hour by hour,” McManamen said.

A similar service, US-based Lantern, is also widely used.

Satellite broadcasts

Created by US-based nonprofit NetFreedom Pioneers, Toosheh is a “filecasting” technology using home satellite TV equipment to broadcast encrypted data to people in Iran.

Users record from the Toosheh satellite TV channel onto a USB stick plugged into their set-top box, which they can then decrypt using a special app installed on their phone or computer.

From that initial download, the data can be copied and shared across multiple households.

The group estimated around three million active users in Iran across 2025, with “thousands to hundreds of thousands… since the (internet) shutdown in January,” the group’s director of projects Emilia James told AFP.

Since people tune in to a broadcast signal, there is no way for the government to track them, she added.

Starlink

Elon Musk-owned satellite internet service Starlink was used during this year’s protests to broadcast information amid government attempts to jam its signals.

At around $2,000 on Iran’s black market, the terminals are expensive and very rare in poorer regions that have suffered the most government repression, Alimardani said.

Amnesty has received reports of “raids on houses… arrests of people who had Starlink devices,” Bahreini said.

Punishments for those caught communicating with the outside world range from prison sentences to the death penalty, she added.

Starlink did not respond to AFP’s request for comment on usage in Iran.