Internet disruption registered across Iran

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Network data from the NetBlocks internet observatory confirm that multiple telecommunication networks in Iran have been disconnected on the morning of Tuesday, 3 March 2020.

Most major providers including the Iran Telecommunication Company, RIghtel and Irancell and Pars are affected and were unreachable internationally for an hour before some connectivity returned.

Network data show a distinct fall in connectivity with several of Iran’s leading network operators from approximately 0:30 a.m. UTC affecting cellular and fixed-line operators. National connectivity fell to a low point of 50% of ordinary levels for a period during the morning.

The disruption comes as Iran struggles to tackle the domestic coronavirus outbreak, facing an upswell in online criticism as well as disinformation about the health crisis online.

Background: Outages and shutdowns

Iran has faced  series of network disruptions through recent months, with some attributed to external factors and others to state information controls to control public protests.

On 8 February 2020 internet access was cut in Iran as a response to a cyber-attack after authorities activated the “Digital Fortress” isolation mechanism.

On 19 December 2019, Iran was one of several countries to be affected by an international network failure that also caused widespread disruption to Google services and sparked concerns about intentional blocking.

In November, Iran deliberately shut down internet access amid widespread public protests.

The November disruptions were introduced over a period of 24 hours culminating in a disconnection of all mobile networks followed by a near-total national internet blackout and partial shutdown of telephony services lasting several days.

During that period, access to limited national services became available for some users as part of the country’s national intranet, or National Information Network. Partial connectivity was restored a week after the first outages but mobile networks remained cut for longer and certain regions only regained connectivity weeks later.

Methodology

NetBlocks diffscans, which map the IP address space of a country in real time, show internet connectivity levels and corresponding outages. Purposeful internet outages may have a distinct network pattern used by NetBlocks to determine and attribute the root cause of an outage, a process known as attribution which follows detection and classification stages.

A summary of data visualizations used in this report:

  • Network Connectivity (National): Internet providers and networks serving the affected region are visualized in a stacked time-series histogram to identify the start and end times of an internet shutdown event. Scales on the y-axis are adjusted to match localized maxima while minima indicate periods when networks became unreachable. The x-axis represents Universal Coordinated time (GMT+0).
    • Standard: Connectivity levels on the y-axis correspond directly to the observed number of reachable connections, as with National Connectivity charts.

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