Vehicles drive along an expressway against the backdrop of smoke rising after a strike on the Iranian capital of Tehran, Thursday. AFP-Yonhap
PARIS — Iran's internet is still "around 1 percent of ordinary levels," monitor Netblocks said on Thursday, leaving most Iranians struggling to access independent news or communicate with the outside world.
Iranian authorities shut off internet access on Saturday after Israel and the United States began air strikes, plunging the country into an information blackout.
"Iran's internet blackout has now exceeded 120 hours with connectivity still flatlining around 1 percent of ordinary levels," internet monitor Netblocks said in a message posted on social media platform X on Thursday.
Some Iranians are finding brief moments of the day when they are able to connect and send messages, while others have resorted to using illegal Starlink subscriptions, the Elon Musk-owned satellite-based internet provider.
Calls to Iran from overseas to mobile phones or landlines are near-impossible.
"The internet speed is very slow," a Tehran resident told AFP by message, asking to remain anonymous for security reasons. "You can't call and voice messages don't get delivered. We can just text."
Netblocks said that Iranian telecoms companies were now sending messages to "threaten users who try to connect to the global internet with legal action."
Iran shut off the internet for several weeks during mass nation-wide protests in January and also cut it during a 12-day war with Israel last June.
"The internet situation here is abysmal," a resident in Bukan in western Iran, who asked not to be named, said in a message sent to AFP. "It connects and disconnects. The connection is slow so the VPNs don't work."
Source: Korea Times News
