Electronic Commerce Association: Iran’s Internet is in a “dangerous” situation

The Electronic Commerce Association has announced that Iran has the worst performance in the three indicators of disruption, limitation and speed of the Internet among the 50 countries surveyed, and has a situation similar to poor and underdeveloped countries, with the difference that this situation is the result of the self-willed decisions of the country’s officials.

According to Iran digital economy annotation, in its previous report, which was followed by many reactions, the Electronic Commerce Association described Iran as the champion of low-quality Internet in the world. Now, exactly 6 months later, in another report on Internet quality in Iran, they said that Iran has defended its championship title.

The Electronic Commerce Association has described Iran’s Internet as full of disturbances, limited and slow and has said that the Internet situation in the country is very similar to poor and underdeveloped countries, but with the difference that a significant part of these problems are self-inflicted and rooted in policies. It has administrative measures and rules.

The association has said that the blinding of Iranian citizens and businesses with one of the most insecure and low-quality internets in the world marks the gradual death of the dream of developing the digital economy and knowledge-based unicorns.

The president should be the most responsible

This report has outlined the responsibility of various stakeholders for this situation and has reached the conclusion that the president should be more accountable than any other official.

To prove this claim, the association has listed the legal responsibilities of the president in this regard:

• Chairmanship of the Supreme National Security Council and appointment of the head of the National Security Council
• chairmanship of the Supreme Council of Cyberspace and appointment of the secretary of the Supreme Council of Cyberspace
• appointment of 6 members out of 2 members of the working group Determining criminal cases
• appointing the Minister of Communications and, as a result, its sub-categories, including Infrastructure Communications Company, Regulatory Organization and Afta, appointing and chairing the government board
• appointing the special working group for the digital economy

Defending the championship

In this report, it is stated that by examining the internet situation in three indicators of disruption, limitation and speed among 50 countries of the world, Iran has received 146 negative points out of 150 points, and although it has received less negative points than the previous report, it still It is at the top of the countries with the worst internet quality.

To measure its indicators, the association has chosen the period from April 2023 to December 2023 and has cited millions of tests from probes in 165 countries of the world, among the top 100 countries in terms of GDP, only 50 countries had sufficient information. For this reason, to increase the accuracy of the report, a ranking has been made among these 50 countries.

It is also pointed out that this report was prepared based on the data of international authorities and the analysis of Internet infrastructure experts, and the governing and government institutions that should be held accountable are invited to present their alternative claims by providing scientific evidence and quantitative data.

The main cause of the disturbance is the saturation of the filtering equipment

The ranking of these 50 countries shows Iran at the 47th rank in terms of the disturbance index. Countries like Indonesia, Bangladesh, Israel and Ireland have a worse situation than Iran. Iran’s position in this index has been fluctuating but improving, which continued until November 2023.

Disorders are divided into two categories, intermittent and continuous. Intermittent disruptions occur for natural or technical reasons on a case-by-case basis. The Electronic Commerce Association has said: normally, network disruptions due to out-of-control incidents can be considered normal and inevitable, but when a single company has the monopoly of the country’s Internet, its disruptions can no longer be considered a normal disruption. looked.

They also mentioned the reaction and notification of the Ministry of Communications as a positive and forward step, but he said that until the monopoly of Infrastructure Communications Company is lifted, future measures to prevent the recurrence of the problem will be notified and the technical and exact causes of these disturbances will be analyzed.

The second group of disorders is almost permanent and their peak occurs during peak consumption hours (eight to eleven at night). Investigations show that in May 18% of domains had 10-50% disturbance and in November and December 2024 this figure decreased to 5%. In this regard, the association has said: “This process gives hope for the effectiveness of expert measures and reviews, as well as the efforts of the Ministry of Communications to improve the quality of the Internet.”

Of course, the decreasing trend of the disorder continued until October and then stopped in November and December.

Iran is the first country with the most disruption in the last 9 months in the table of countries with the most disruptions, with an average of about 48% of disrupted websites.

Hour-by-hour analysis of disruptions shows that between 5:00 p.m. and 11:00 p.m. and with peak consumption, different layers of the network (access, transmission, and international broadband) are saturated and cause disruptions.

However, the association said that according to the unofficial reports it has received, the main cause of this is a malfunction and saturation of the processors of the filtering equipment.

The aforementioned report said that the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology should be responsible for the quality of the Internet in Iran more than any other institution; Even if imposed policies and problems in the access layer cause these disturbances, there is no difference in the essence of the problem, and the Ministry of Communications should fix and follow up the problems with a transparent and data-oriented report to the people.

The most absolute shutdown of the Internet is for Iran

The association has classified internet “restriction” in Iran into four levels of complete/controlled internet shutdown, filtering, embargo, and internal regulations and examined each one separately.

According to the announcement of the association, in the first half of 2023, Iranians have experienced the most self-inflicted (political) disruption of the Internet. Iran is in the first place with 14 times, followed by India with 9 times and Pakistan with 3 times.

The worst situation can be seen in the second indicator, filtering. Iran with an average of 49.5% of filtered websites is even worse than China with an average of 49.4%.

The association also cited data from the Freedom on the Net website and said that Iranian citizens have the worst situation in terms of free access to the Internet after China and Myanmar. In the sub-indices of the same survey, Iran ranks first in the component of respect for citizens’ rights and ranks fourth in the index of restrictions (censorship) among the surveyed countries.

Iran, China and Turkmenistan are the only countries in the world that have filtered all 6 popular social platforms in the world: Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, Telegram and WhatsApp. North Korea is not seen among these three countries because Telegram is not filtered in this country.

This report has warned that the filtering of services such as Google Play, which there is no logical reason for their filtering, makes citizens’ digital equipment extremely unsafe and vulnerable.

Also, the association has prepared a suggested list of 200 websites to fix the filter and said this list can be provided to the filtering committee.

Internal sanctions, foreign sanctions

The third level of restrictions in Iran refers to the problems caused by sanctions. The inhumane laws and frameworks of international institutions have caused extensive restrictions on the access of Iranian users.

The association has said that in order to solve this problem, it has prepared a list of 600 websites to which the access of Iranian IPs has been restricted and warned them about the impact of these sanctions on internet disruption and violation of citizens’ rights. Although this is a symbolic measure and for it to be fruitful, extensive international legal and media measures are needed.

The fourth level of restrictions is related to internal regulations or, in the association’s term, self-filtering. The forum said that filtering domestic sites is even more strange for foreign users than filtering. Among the top 100 Iranian government websites, 57 websites are not available from abroad. The association has sent official letters to these organizations and noted the consequences of this approach.

According to the authors of this report, the judiciary plays a fundamental role in restricting the internet in Iran by imposing many restrictions through the orders of judges or based on the non-transparent, non-responsive and ineffective policies of the filtering committee, but they also pointed to the role of the government.

In this regard, four main criticisms have been raised against the government. First, the discourse is far from reality and demeaning the issue, for which the statement of the Minister of Guidance was cited, who said that we do not have a filter in Iran. Also, the communications minister’s interviews have been referred to as “handing over responsibility to an unaccountable other”.

The third case is assigning the responsibility of filtering to foreign platforms that do not establish a branch in Iran. The last criticism also refers to the order to review the restrictions without strict follow-up and specific timing.