Internet via Starlink is not as important in Iran as it is in Ukraine

Internet via satellite has proven to be a crucial facility in Ukraine. Even where local telecom and power supplies have been destroyed, residents and military personnel can still connect via Starlink terminals. There are about 25,000 of them in the country.

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There are also about a hundred Starlink receivers active in Iran, according to Starlink owner Elon Musk. The system for demonstrators could be a solution here. Violent protests broke out in Iran in September after the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini, who died after being detained by the vice squad for allegedly not wearing her headscarf correctly. The demonstrations continue – despite violent intervention, mass arrests and several death sentences and executions – three months later, partly fueled by social media, where the hashtags #MahsaAmini and #IranProtests were shared hundreds of millions of times. The Internet is also an important source for international media, now that there are hardly any journalists left in Iran.

Since the outbreak of the protests, the authorities have further restricted the internet and social media. Services such as Facebook, Twitter, TikTok, Instagram or WhatsApp are frequently blocked, and in parts of the country the internet is often not available at all.

After US Secretary of State Antony Blinken (Foreign Affairs) announced in September that he would adjust some sanctions rules against Iran so that tech companies could improve internet access for Iranians, Starlink owner Musk already announced that he would “reinforce” the system in Iran.activated” had. Three months later, about a hundred receivers are active in Iran, tweeted he Monday.

According to The Wall Street Journal some 200 dishes are said to have been smuggled into the country, with the support of a group of Iranian-American tech entrepreneurs. The newspaper saw video footage taken by an activist in Tehran of a working Starlink receiver on the roof of his residence. When the device is not in use, he hides it under his mother’s black chador. There were already circulating in October images which would show a working terminal on a rooftop in the capital.

Unobstructed view of the sky

This immediately shows one of the main limitations of the system: Starlink dishes must have a clear view of the sky to pick up the signal from the internet satellites of the Starlink network. They don’t work indoors. This makes it more difficult to hide the recipients.

There is also the question of how good the coverage of the network in Iran is. To establish an Internet connection, one of the more than 3,000 Starlink satellites now hovering in low Earth orbit must be in contact with the user’s terminal and a ground station connected to the Internet at the same time. Such a ground station can be located a maximum of about a thousand kilometers from the terminal. Such ground stations are not available in Iran. It is not clear through which stations in the region Iranian terminals could be reached.

However, Starlink recently introduced a new technique whereby the satellites can transmit the signal to each other via lasers. This could reduce reliance on Earth ground stations, but it is unknown if this method is available to Iran.

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In any case, Starlink is not suitable to offer uncensored internet access to all 87 million Iranians: it would require many tens of thousands of terminals. Most people in the country are more helped by VPN software, for example, which makes it possible to use the internet encrypted and via foreign servers, so that blockades on the Iranian internet can be circumvented. Such software, although banned, is widely used in Iran.

During protests, demonstrators can also use apps that allow phones in the immediate vicinity to communicate with each other, for example via Bluetooth. Such so-called mesh networking apps don’t need a working internet.