Iranians began to regain internet access on Wednesday after authorities ended a monthslong shutdown, one of the world’s longest and strictest national shutdowns, following the United States’ and Israel attack on Iran on 28 February.
Their decision to lift some restrictions this week came as negotiators appeared to be closing in on a more permanent truce as representatives from the US and Iran engaged to finalise a potential deal. But many Iranians fear access could be cut off again – at a moment’s notice.
On Wednesday many users said service was slow and spotty in some areas, with apps like YouTube and Instagram heavily restricted, as they were before the cutoff began during nationwide protests in January.
Amir Rashidi, an Iranian cybersecurity analyst, said there were still widespread disruptions. “It’s too early to say the shutdown is over,” he wrote on X.
An unprecedented shutdown
According to Internet tracking company Netblocks, Iran’s connectivity, which measures the ability of devices to connect to the internet, is currently at around 86% of capacity from before the cutoff.
Internet analysis firm Kentik said internet traffic, which measures the amount of data transferred and is a good illustration of usage, was at around 40%.
Iran’s roughly 90 million people have been cut off from the internet for most of this year. Young people with online careers saw their incomes evaporate. Job losses and the closure of online businesses added to the war’s steep economic costs.
According to the Islamic Republic’s communications ministry, some 10 million people have jobs that depend on internet connectivity.
The cutoff made it difficult for Iranian families to communicate through months of unrest and war. At some points, phone lines were also cut off, though they were later restored.
A woman living in Tehran said that for months she was barely able to speak to her sons living abroad. She couldn’t believe authorities had restored access, saying she had assumed they would find some justification to prolong the outage.
The internet cutoff cost an estimated $30-40 million daily, with indirect losses likely twice that much, a member of Iran’s Chamber of Commerce, Afshin Kolahi, told a local newspaper last month.
A slow return to service
With the reinstatement of connection, media reports show businesses have started reappearing online, announcing their return with posts on sites like Instagram and Telegram.
A gamer and tech influencer in the central city of Isfahan said the shutdown had caused him to lose a lot of his audience on YouTube and Instagram, where he had spent years building up a large following.
“All my views and interactions are way down. I’ve been erased from the algorithm,” he said in a voice note sent by WhatsApp, adding that his internet connection was still slower than before the shutdown.
“The situation is such that many content producers have had their income reduced to zero, have moved on to other jobs, or have been forced to sell their equipment to survive,” he said. He spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal.
Iranian authorities first shut down the internet in January during mass anti-government protests that were eventually stamped out in a violent crackdown that saw thousands of people killed and tens of thousands detained.
That cutoff was just starting to ease when the government imposed a complete internet blackout after the start of the current war, when US and Israeli strikes killed Iran’s supreme leader and other top officials.
Generally Iranians still had access to a national net, but that has a far narrower reach, and users complained of poor service and heavy censorship.
However, senior government officials were given SIM cards granting them access to the global internet. Under pressure, the government expanded access to the SIM cards to some professions during the shutdown.
The Iranian government has faced criticism for the prolonged shutdown, which caused even more harm to an economy devastated by inflation, strikes on key industries and a US blockade on Iranian ports.