Originally posted by the Voice of America.
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Iran's Internet Mostly Down for 5th Day, With Slight Easing of Access in
South

Michael Lipin

   A major internet outage in Iran aimed at suppressing anti-government
   protests has extended into a 5th day, with access levels rising
   slightly as authorities said they reconnected several regions to the
   web.

     Real-time technical data corroborate reports in [1]#Iran news media
     that some connectivity is being restored, although only partially.
     At the current time national connectivity has risen further to 10%.
     Follow our live report for updates on the situation
     ð°[2]https://t.co/1Al0DT8an1
     -- NetBlocks.org (@netblocks) [3]November 21, 2019

   In a series of Thursday tweets, London-based Internet monitoring group
   NetBlocks said Iran's almost-total Internet shutdown began to ease
   after 113 hours, with the national connectivity rate rising from 5% to
   10%, and later to 14%. Connectivity had plummeted to about 5% late
   Saturday and mostly remained at that level until Thursday afternoon
   Iran time.

   Iranian state news agencies reported that authorities were gradually
   restoring Internet access in several regions, including the southern
   province of Hormozgan that is home to the major port of Bandar Abbas.

   Speaking to reporters in Tehran, the Secretary of Iran's Supreme
   Cyberspace Council Abolhassan Firouzabadi said the state body would
   make a decision later Thursday about whether to end the five-day
   internet shutdown that has caused further damage to an economy already
   weakened by U.S. sanctions and government corruption and mismanagement.
   He expressed hopethe outage would end "within the next two days."
   Iranian authorities imposed the shutdown to stop opposition activists
   from communicating and posting online images of nationwide protests
   that erupted last Friday in response to the government's abrupt 50%
   increase in the subsidized price of gasoline.

   U.S. President Donald Trump tweeted that Iran has become "so unstable"
   that its government shut down internet access to try to stop people
   from talking about "tremendous violence" in the country.

     ....They want ZERO transparency, thinking the world will not find
     out the death and tragedy that the Iranian Regime is causing!
     -- Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) [4]November 21, 2019

   The protests had spread to more than 50 urban centers in Iran by
   Saturday, according to images received from Iran and verified by VOA
   Persian.

References

   1. https://twitter.com/hashtag/Iran?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
   2. https://t.co/1Al0DT8an1
   3. https://twitter.com/netblocks/status/1197464850605187072?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
   4. https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1197574002073624576?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw

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