Almost a hundred Internet terminals of the Starlink network are active in Iran, said SpaceX boss Elon Musk on Monday.
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The American billionaire pledged in September to deploy the Starlink satellite network in Iran at a time when Iranian authorities are increasingly restricting access to the internet.
“Nearing 100 active Starlinks in Iran,” Musk tweeted Monday.
Starlink has a network of over 2,000 small, low-orbit satellites above the Earth that provide internet access. Terrestrial end devices are then connected to routers that make it possible to generate WLAN and thus Internet access.
Since the beginning of the war in Ukraine, SpaceX has shipped thousands of terminals there, ensuring internet connectivity. To date, around 25,000 terminals have been used in the country.
Demonstrations have rocked Iran since the September 16 death of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Iranian Kurdish woman, after she was arrested by these police in Tehran. 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 — the only social networks still available until this fall — and to VPNs that Iranians use to access banned sites.