As the slow speed of the Internet in Iran last week brought forth complaints by computer users who also expressed fears over the government’s measures to fully control their access to the internet, the country’s minister of communications announced that the project known as “national internet” would be launched next week and added that 42,000 government computers would be completely cut off from the world.
According to Tabnak website, minister Reza Taghipour said, “The national information network will become operational by next week across the whole country for all government agencies and all communications of some 42,000 government PCs shall from then on be switched from the Internet to the national internet. Currently, government agencies in 29 provinces already have separate access to the national network, in addition to the Internet. But as of next week, the only network available to government agencies in all 31 provinces of Iran will be exclusively through the national network. The general features of this project have already been provided to all government organization who have also received the operational instructions.”
Taghipour’s deputy provided more details and said, access to some search engines such as Google will be cut and added that the reason for this restriction was “the decision of the special committee on confidentiality” (Komite Baresi Masadighe Mahramane).
According to Mehr news agency, deputy Ali Hakim Javadi said in this regard, “Restrictions have been placed on some Google services and for some companies who were active in electronic commercial advertisements. There are no special restrictions on the various parts of Google and the only controls are in electronic trade which some companies were engaged in.”
These restrictions come as Iran’s ISNA student news agency recently published the results of a report on the use of Google by Iranian PC users and wrote, “According to recent studies, currently it is not possible to access such services as YouTube, Google, Blogger, etc in Iran. In this regard, research results previously published by Mehr news agency indicated that the total profits of Google in 2011 stood at 36 billion Dollars of which about 443 billion Toman (based on 1,600 Toman to a Dollar) was related to users in Iran. Every Iranian uses Google on average 5 times a day while the total annual usage stood at 1,825 times. The study also indicated that 40 of clicks of Iranian users were through commercial links that appeared in the search results and that on average an Iranian user clicked 307 times on commercial links per year. In conclusion, Google’s average income from every click on a commercial link was 401 Dollars, making its average annual income about 307 dollars. This search engine made 277 million Dollars from Iranian users.”
The announcement of next week’s launching of the national internet and denial of access to the global Internet has brought responses from domestic and international media. In this regard, the Iranian weekly Asr Ertebatat (Age of Communications) wrote in one of its recent issues, “The national information network has been defined in the fifth development plan of the country and it provides for a free information exchange and subscription but the ministry of communications has taken measures to separate the Internet from the Intranet in its first phase of work and calls this phase the national information network. Apparently, the separation of the two networks and the creation of two independent and separate networks (the Intranet and the Internet) is because of the separation in bandwidths between the Sherkate Ertebatat Zirsakht telecommunications company (a government commercial entity that handles Iran’s international Internet communications and inter-provincial telephone communications for TCI under which it operates) and the Telecommunications Company of Iran (TCI) which has been dubbed Phase I of the national communications network. TCI and Zirsakht Company battled each other in public two years ago over the debts of each to the other – legally Zirsakht is a subdivision of TCI – because of the common communication lines and cables they used. Because of this, TCI in 2010 purchased new routers to separate the two networks and took steps to purchase other equipment for this the following year which have recently been installed in 28 of 31 provinces across Iran, with the exception of Chahar Mahal Bakhtiari and the Kohgiluyeh and Boyer-Ahmad provinces. In this regard, Reza Taghipour, the minister of communications and information technology had announced the separation of the internet from the intranet in 28 provinces as the first phase of the national telecommunications network. This separation had aroused concerns right from the beginning because it had been defined as a priority for the ministry.”
Commenting on the changes coming to Internet users, Kalameh website expressed its concerns and wrote, “Following the rigged 2009 presidential elections and the public outcry over them, the issue of expanding filtering and launching a national internet network that could be fully controlled by the government became the focus of the regime, launching talk about a pure or national network. Over the past years and months, many launch dates have been announced by government officials regarding this network. The concern that many Iranians have over the implementation of this project is that its next phases will include further restrictions for users in accessing the global internet. Some experts however have said that the implementation of this project with current facilities will not hamper Internet access any more than it does today.”
Prior to this, Dr. Shahshahani, the head of the mathematics department of Sharif Technical University, who is viewed as the founder of the Internet in Iran had told Ghods newspaper, “If people better understood what the national internet means, they would not oppose it. This is because the model that is presented is something that currently exists in China. Unfortunately all our models these days come from China. Some replication may be useful but this does not work in all areas. What is called the national internet implies better and more extensive domestic links. But it also means that all our international connections go through completely controllable channels. Today, perhaps 95 percent of Iran’s links and connections are through telecommunications or through fiber optics, so most of the time whenever you access a site, filtering is already in place. In fact this is what national internet means. So it should not be the center of much focus.”
Till now, many officials of the Islamic republic attribute public discontent from the regime over people’s access to the Internet. These officials have repeatedly said that the Internet is “an enemy of the Iranian state” and that such sites as Facebook and Twitter are used for espionage purposes in Iran.
The current minister of communications who is striving to calm people’s concerns about the implementation of this new telecommunications project has in the past repeatedly referred to the Internet as “a threat.” Last year when talking about a “purer internet” is reported to have said, “The Internet has been used as a very powerful tool in color revolutions around the world and Google provides all of its information to the CIA. The Internet cannot be trusted. Because of this, we shall launch a pure internet parallel to the global Internet in the country. Security harm along with cultural, social and moral harm of the current Internet have resulted in that other countries have launched a parallel internet. The current (global) Internet is based on a humanistic and liberal theory. The Internet is dangerous for humanity and needs to be redefined. The idea of a pure internet is a response to this issue.”
Heydar Moslehi, the minister of intelligence of the Islamic republic also last year called social networks “new threats” against the Islamic republic and added, “Intelligence services created the Internet and provide you with information that is not what you are looking for but what it wants to give you and it takes information from you.”
The director of Iran’s civil defense Gholamreza Jalali has also publicly said, “Yahoo and Gmail have no security and whatever is sent through these sites is first copied to their control centers and then sent to the recipient. To confront this issue, a new network called the national internet should be created in the country as soon as possible.”
Nazanin Kamdar
Source: Roozonline