In the month of November, Iran’s internet infrastructure faced significant challenges. The country experienced three major national-level outages, along with two additional disruptions affecting mobile and internet operators.
In all three outages, the Telecommunication Infrastructure Company attributed the fault to disruptions in transmission lines and international internet routes. The severe network routing disruption, or Active probing, which started in Qazvin and Alborz the previous month, continued without any explanation from the authorities, and the internet outages in Sistan and Baluchestan on Fridays persist as well.
National-Level Disruptions Due to Cutting off External Communication Routes
In the month of Aban, the internet in Iran underwent three severe disruptions, verging on complete outages.
- ٔNovember 3rd: A widespread outage affected all of Iran, observable on the IODA graphs. Seven out of nine data centers, monitorable on Arvan Cloud’s radar, experienced severe disruptions. In a statement, the Infrastructure Communications Company announced that this disruption was caused by the cutting off of internet entry paths from Georgia.
- November 11th: Another extensive disruption occurred, registered as a severe disturbance on the IODA radar. Significant disruptions were observed in data centers of IranHost, Hamrah-e-Aval, MobinNet, Shatel, ParsOnline, Afranet, and Tehran DataCenter2 on Arvan Cloud’s radar from around 14:45 to 20:00 local time. The Telecommunications Infrastructure Company announced that this disruption was due to the cutting of some of the inbound links from Armenia.
November 18th: A widespread outage affected fixed and mobile internet in provinces such as East Azerbaijan, Ardabil, Zanjan, Hamedan, Qazvin, Mazandaran, Tehran, Qom, Semnan, Isfahan, Chaharmahal and Bakhtiari, Kerman, Khuzestan, and Hormozgan for more than an hour. This disruption was not visible in the data center traffic on Arvan Cloud’s radar, but Pooya Pirhosseinloo, CEO of Arvan Cloud, confirmed a 40-minute total internet outage in Tehran in a tweet. The Telecommunications Infrastructure Company attributed the internet outage to “a disruption in the transmission network of Tehran province”, occurring from 9:45 to 10:25 local time and causing disruptions in domestic and international traffic. Eisa Zarepour, Iran’s Minister of Communications, on November 29th, declared the cause of this disruption to be technical, asserting that the number of disruptions has decreased compared to before.
This comes as the Telecommunications Infrastructure Company, affiliated with the Ministry of Communications, published an internet outage schedule twice in October 2023, and according to IODA statistics, in the year 2023, the internet in Iran was disrupted for 60,000 minutes.
Operator-Level Disruptions
In addition to nationwide disruptions, subscribers to the fixed internet services of the Telecommunication Company of Iran and Rightel also experienced internet outages, and the websites of these companies went down.
- November 15th: Internet users in Iran reported that the fixed internet service of the Telecommunication Company of Iran was disrupted, and the website of this operator was also inaccessible.
- November 26th: Zoomit, a website that publishes news on Iran’s technology sector, reported that the internet for many users of the mobile operator Rightel was cut off from the afternoon, and both the application and website of this operator were unavailable. No explanation was provided by the mentioned companies regarding this matter.
Continuation of the crisis in Qazvin
The IODA chart for Qazvin province shows severe disruptions in November 2023. According to this chart, the network routing disruption, or Active probing, which had started on the 18th of october is still ongoing. Filterwatch, in conversation with residents of the area, has been unable to gather more evidence on this matter. Authorities have not responded to this situation.
Continuation of early morning outages in Alborz province
The network routing, or Active probing, in Alborz province, which had been facing severe disruptions close to outages from October, particularly around midnight to the early morning hours, continued to experience significant disruptions in November 2023. Authorities have not responded to these outages.
Other notable disruptions
- November 2nd: Coinciding with the visit of Ebrahim Raisi, the President of Iran, to the Kurdistan region, the IODA graph showed severe disruptions close to a complete outage in the internet in the area.
- Fridays in Sistan and Baluchestan: Internet outages on Fridays, which began on September 30th, 2022, known as Bloody Friday, and continued almost every Friday morning with few exceptions, still persisted on Fridays of the 12th and 19th of Aban.
- November 20th: According to the IODA graph, the internet in 28 provinces of Iran experienced severe disruptions close to an outage.
- South Khorasan Province: The IODA graph shows that the internet in South Khorasan province experienced very severe disruptions from November 16 to 29.
