The effectiveness of Iran's internet filtering and the government's countermeasures against Starlink

Iran's government fears that its filtering is becoming ineffective against satellite internet, according to a report published on 14 October by Filterwatch, a group that monitors Iran's internet (launched in 2012 by Small Media, a London-based digital rights organisation, and now part of the Miaan Group). In the report's analysis, ordinary filtering is applied on domestic operators' networks and at international gateways. Starlink terminals connect directly to satellites, so their traffic passes through neither. The government's response has therefore shifted to jamming signals, confiscating equipment, punishing users and applying diplomatic pressure, and the penalties and jamming both apply inside Iran.

The Iranian technology outlet Zoomit reported that on 5 October the secretary of the Supreme Council of Cyberspace claimed Iran had disabled Starlink terminals "in a controlled manner" during the unrest of the Iranian month of Dey (roughly late December 2025 to mid-January 2026) and the nationwide shutdown in January. The secretary cited reports on Western websites in support and said Iran had other technologies available. The day before, Iran's foreign ministry summoned Norway's ambassador to protest that Norway had not acted on decisions of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) Radio Regulations Board to stop unauthorised Starlink transmissions inside Iran.

Iranian officials do not agree on how well the measures work. According to the semi-official Mehr News Agency on 14 September, the CEO of the Telecommunication Infrastructure Company, who is also a deputy minister of communications, said the ministry's official position is that current filtering policy has not been effective, and that decisions do not rest with a single ministry. The CEO estimated Starlink traffic in Iran at about 1 Tbps (one terabit per second), still a low share of national traffic, and said domestic institutions had no precise user figures. The CEO also said international traffic had returned to about 90% of its earlier level.

The technology outlet Digiato relayed a warning from another deputy minister of communications that continued restrictive policies push users towards tools that do not depend on the domestic network. Gadgetnews and Digiato also quoted this deputy minister telling a meeting that, on current trends, the next crisis would leave no option but to cut the power, because Starlink no longer depends on Iran's network.

In 2025 Iran passed the Law on Intensifying Punishment for Espionage and Cooperation with the Israeli Regime and Hostile States against National Security and Interests, which cleared the Guardian Council in October that year. Under Article 5, as relayed by Hamshahri Online, using, carrying, keeping, buying, selling or importing unlicensed satellite internet equipment such as Starlink for personal use is punishable by a grade 6 prison term and confiscation of the equipment (reports differ on the length of the term). Supply, production, distribution and installation carry a grade 5 prison term, and the death penalty applies where the purpose is to oppose the system or to spy and the offender is regarded as a hostile force. As of 29 October we had found no prosecution under this article.

Perspective

The deputy minister quoted by Digiato also said that if direct-to-cell technology, which connects phones straight to satellites, becomes widespread, even mobile device registration (the government's most basic means of verifying identity) will stop working. According to Tehran Times' account of the secretary of the Supreme Council of Cyberspace, about 80% of Starlink packets were disrupted during the unrest, and most of the remaining traffic became largely ineffective. The secretary also cited Starlink's use in conflicts such as Ukraine, saying satellite communications can support military command and intelligence gathering.

A NasNet technician interviewed by Filterwatch (the report links NasNet to the website of a router configuration tool built around Starlink connections) said packet loss in some areas reached about 80% in January and fell to about 10% after Starlink updates. The technician also said Iran had never managed to disable Starlink completely across the country. In its key findings, Filterwatch cites technical assessments that a nationwide shutdown is not technically feasible, and in the body of the report the basis is this technician's account. The technician was describing packet loss and the secretary the share of packets disrupted, so the two 80% figures may not measure the same thing (our assessment).

Under Article 18 of the ITU Radio Regulations and related resolutions, a transmitting earth station needs authorisation from the administration of the country where it operates. According to the Board's page on the ITU website, in March the Board found that the actions of Norway, the notifying administration for the Starlink system, did not comply with its obligations, but that the Board had no authority to suspend the system's frequency assignments on those grounds. At its 102nd meeting, from late June to early July, the Board strongly urged Norway and the United States to have the operator immediately stop unauthorised transmissions inside Iran, and asked Iran to make every effort to identify and deactivate unauthorised terminals on its territory.

On the same page, the Board summarises Norway's position that it would not enforce the Board's earlier decisions without an explicit requirement in the regulatory framework, and the United States' view that the Board was exceeding its mandate under the ITU Constitution. The Board's 103rd meeting runs from 26 to 30 October, and as of 29 October we could find no outcome. According to Tehran Times, citing Iran's foreign ministry, the Iranian official who summoned the Norwegian ambassador referred to the United States and Israel using Starlink to support interventionist activities against Iran. This is the Iranian government's account, which we have not independently verified, and we found no public response from SpaceX or the Norwegian government to the summons.

Cloudflare Radar recorded a traffic anomaly in HTTP requests from Iran on 4 October, after which daily peaks were around 40% of the high on the evening of 3 October, recovering day by day to 60 to 70% on 17 to 19 October (rough readings from our query on 29 October). Filterwatch notes user reports of VPN failures in the same period and puts forward a hypothesis of interference aimed at circumvention tools. According to Filterwatch's account, which links to a post on X, the director of internet analysis at the network analytics company Kentik confirmed that the drop was limited to Cloudflare's network, and told Filterwatch that Iran's overall traffic was about 60% of its level before 8 January (the country was under a nationwide shutdown in January). Filterwatch considers this inconsistent with the 90% figure the CEO gave on 14 September, though the two may rest on different baselines and measures (our inference).

In another report from the same period, Filterwatch analyses three Android malware cases, each starting with a Telegram message. One of the apps was disguised as a Starlink and VPN tool. According to the report, a critical part of each operation was persuading the target to install an app from outside an official app store. A message from a friend's account may indicate that the account was compromised, but the evidence is insufficient to confirm it.

We are a community based in Taiwan, where the recent legislative change concerns operators. According to Business Today, the amendment to Article 36 of the Telecommunications Management Act, which passed its third reading in the Legislative Yuan on 21 July, covers operators setting up public telecommunications networks with satellite technology. Once the competent authority has considered national security and other factors and given approval, such operators can be exempted from limits including the cap on foreign shareholding. We could not find rules on individuals owning or using terminals, nor, as of 29 October, whether SpaceX has applied; during the committee review, the Minister of Digital Affairs relayed that Starlink had told the government it was not especially interested in the Taiwan market.

In South Korea, The Asia Business Daily reported in August 2025 that, according to the Ministry of Science and ICT, a SpaceX earth station terminal had passed conformity assessment, after which each company could decide when to launch. In December 2025 Korea JoongAng Daily reported residential and business plans on the Starlink Korea website with preregistration open, and named KT SAT and SK Telink as licensed resellers on the enterprise side. Both are press reports, and we did not find the ministry's own announcement. Beyond the equipment assessment, we found no rules on whether individuals need a separate permit to own or use a terminal.

In India, according to Advanced Television in June 2026, the Department of Telecommunications granted Starlink a Unified License with authorisation for Global Mobile Personal Communication by Satellite services in June 2025, while SpaceX said it had received a letter of intent and the final licence had yet to be granted. We found no rules on individuals owning or using terminals in India.

Advanced Television also summarised a Bloomberg report linking the delay to Iran, according to which the Ministry of Home Affairs had withheld final clearances amid concerns that grew after reports of Starlink terminals operating in Iran, where the service is not licensed. Officials were said to be examining whether the company could meet Indian security requirements when facing competing demands from foreign governments. A Starlink vice president called the report misleading and said discussions with the government were continuing. We found nothing on developments after June.

In mainland China, the rules and enforcement we found concern ships. According to the trade publication The Maritime Executive in January, China's Maritime Traffic Safety Law requires vessels under Chinese jurisdiction to route digital communications through coast stations or satellite gateway stations licensed by the authorities, and Starlink is not among the approved operators. Fines reach 100,000 yuan in serious cases, and up to 500,000 yuan under separate radio regulations when the equipment is used for illegal activities.

Citing the P&I correspondent Oasis, The Maritime Executive also reported that the maritime safety administration for the port of Ningbo opened the first known inquiry into a vessel's connectivity in December 2025. In a notice on 9 January, the P&I club Steamship Mutual wrote that Chinese authorities had recently started to penalise vessels for using Starlink within Chinese jurisdictional waters. These are industry summaries. We did not check the original legal texts, and found no rules or cases on individuals holding or using terminals on land.

Readers outside Iran do not need to change their habits because of this news. Filterwatch analysed Android cases, and the tactic of steering targets to install apps from outside official stores could appear elsewhere, so links and installation files sent by friends are not necessarily trustworthy (our inference).

One way to compare approaches is to ask who approves satellite internet operators and whether individuals need permission to own a terminal. On the first point, Taiwan lets satellite operators be exempted from foreign-ownership limits after case-by-case approval, the reported step in South Korea was a conformity assessment of a terminal model, India's final clearance has reportedly been held up in a security review (which Starlink disputes), and in mainland China ships must route traffic through licensed stations. On the second point, we found no rules for individuals in any of the four places.

When a government asks an operator to disable terminals on its territory, whether it relies on domestic law, ITU rules or the operator's terms of service is another point of difference. The comparison should also cover what a policy is meant to achieve, including whether independent measurements exist to check official claims about how well filtering and shutdowns work.