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Major Internet Disruption In Iran Might Be Due To Wider Connectivity Issue


A man holds a smartphone connected to a Wifi network without internet access at an office in the Iranian capital Tehran on November 17, 2019.
A man holds a smartphone connected to a Wifi network without internet access at an office in the Iranian capital Tehran on November 17, 2019.

Reports from Iran indicate a disruption of the Internet in some regions of the country since Thursday morning. Tehran, central regions of the country, including Isfahan and the north have experienced disruption of connections both to domestic and foreign websites.

Users have reported that when they called service providers to complain, they heard recorded messages saying, “The disruption is nationwide, and it is not clear when service will be restored.”

However, Radio Farda has not received direct reports of disruptions from other parts of the country.

The Internet monitoring service Netblocks also confirmed that since 11:00 am local time several service providers of landlines and mobile phones have been experiencing disruptions and “national connectivity levels” are below 50 percent.

But Netblocks also reported that YouTube, Gmail and Google services down in multiple countries: “high impact in Turkey, Eastern Europe; incident not related to state filtering”.

The disruption Netblocks reported could be what has caused connectivity problems in Iran.

An Iranian official told ILNA news website that disruptions in Iran is related to fiber optic lines from Europe.

Iran has been filtering thousands of websites, including Facebook for years and almost all users deploy circumvention tools to get access to many foreign websites.

During nationwide protests in November, Iran cut off connection to the Internet to prevent protesters from organizing and to stop information reaching other countries.

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