Steph Deschamps / December 27, 2022
Nearly a hundred Internet terminals of the Starlink network are active in Iran, said Monday the boss of SpaceX Elon Musk.
The American billionaire had promised in September to deploy the Starlink satellite network in Iran at a time when Iranian authorities are increasingly restricting access to the Internet.
Soon 100 active Starlinks in Iran," Musk tweeted Monday.
Starlink has a network of more than 2,000 small satellites in low orbit above the earth, which can provide internet access. Ground terminals are then connected to routers that generate wifi and thus internet access.
Since the beginning of the war in Ukraine, SpaceX has delivered thousands of terminals to provide internet access. Some 25,000 terminals have been deployed in the country to date.
Protests have been shaking Iran since the September 16 death of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Iranian Kurdish woman, after she was arrested in Tehran by police. Since then, hundreds have been killed, thousands arrested and two 23-year-old men hanged.
Iranian authorities have since restricted access to Instagram and WhatsApp -- until this fall the only social networks still available -- and to VPNs, which Iranians use to access banned sites.