On 8 January 2026, the Iranian authorities imposed a near-total communications shutdown. It was the nation’s first full info blackout: For weeks, the web was off throughout all provinces whereas providers together with the government-run intranet, VPNs, textual content messaging, cellular calls, and even landlines have been severely throttled. It was an unprecedented lockdown that left greater than 90 million people lower off not solely from the world, however from each other.
Since then, connectivity has by no means totally returned. Following U.S. and Israeli airstrikes in late February, Iran once more imposed near-total restrictions, and folks contained in the nation once more noticed international info flows dry up.
The unique January shutdown got here amid nationwide protests over the deepening financial disaster and political repression, wherein tens of millions of individuals chanted antigovernment slogans within the streets. Whereas Iranian protests have change into frequent in recent times, this was one of the crucial vital uprisings because the Islamic Revolution in 1979. The federal government responded shortly and brutally. One report put the demise toll at more than 7,000 confirmed deaths and greater than 11,000 underneath investigation. Many sources consider the demise toll might exceed 30,000.
13 days into the January shutdown, we at NetFreedom Pioneers (NFP) turned to a system we had constructed for precisely this type of second—one which sends recordsdata over odd satellite tv for pc TV alerts. Throughout the nationwide info vacuum, our expertise, known as Toosheh, delivered real-time updates into Iran, providing a lifeline to tens of millions starved of trusted info.
How Iran Censors the Web
I joined NetFreedom Pioneers, a nonprofit targeted on anticensorship expertise, in 2014. Censorship in Iran was a defining function of my youth within the Nineties. After the Islamic Revolution, most Iranians started to guide double lives—one at residence, the place they might drink, dance, and select their clothes, and one other in public, the place everybody needed to adjust to stifling authorities legal guidelines.
Iran’s web infrastructure is extra centralized than in different components of the world, making it simpler for the federal government to limit the move of data. Morteza Nikoubazl/NurPhoto/Getty Photos
My first expertise with secret communications was once I was 5 and residing within the small metropolis of Fasa in southern Iran. My uncle introduced residence a satellite tv for pc dish—dangerously unlawful on the time—that allowed us to tune into 12 satellite tv for pc channels. My favourite was Cartoon Community. Then, throughout my teenage years, this similar uncle launched me to the web by way of dial-up modems. I keep in mind utilizing Yahoo Mail with its 4 megabytes of storage, studying information from world wide, and studying in regards to the Chandra X-ray telescope from NASA’s web site.
That openness didn’t final. As web use unfold within the early 2000s, the Iranian authorities started reshaping the community itself. Not like the extremely distributed networks in the USA or Europe, the place hundreds of suppliers trade site visitors throughout many unbiased routes, Iran’s connection to the worldwide web is comparatively centralized. Most worldwide site visitors passes by way of a small variety of gateways managed by state-linked telecom operators. That structure provides authorities uncommon leverage: By limiting or withdrawing these connections, they’ll sharply scale back the nation’s entry to the skin world.
Over the previous decade, Iran has expanded this management by way of what it calls the National Information Network, a domestically routed system designed to maintain information contained in the nation every time attainable. Many authorities providers, banking programs, and native platforms are hosted on this inner community. During times of unrest, entry to the worldwide web will be throttled or lower off whereas parts of this home community proceed to perform.
The federal government started its censorship marketing campaign by redirecting or blocking web sites. As web use grew, it adopted extra subtle approaches. For instance, the Telecommunication Company of Iran makes use of a way known as deep packet inspection to investigate the content material of knowledge packets in actual time. This methodology allows it to establish and block particular kinds of site visitors, akin to VPN connections, messaging apps, social media platforms, and banned web sites.
The Stealth of Satellite tv for pc Transmissions
Toosheh’s communication workaround builds on a historical past of satellite tv for pc TV adoption in Center Japanese and North African international locations. By the early 2000s, satellite tv for pc dishes have been frequent in Iran; as we speak nearly all of households in Iran have entry to satellite tv for pc TV regardless of its official prohibition.
Not like subscription providers akin to DirecTV and Dish Community, “free-to-air” satellite tv for pc TV broadcasts are unencrypted and will be obtained by anybody with a dish and receiver—no subscription required. As a result of the alerts are open, customers also can seize and retailer the info they carry, reasonably than merely watching it reside. Tech-savvy folks discovered that they might use a digital video broadcasting (DVB) card—a bit of {hardware} that connects to a pc and tunes into satellite tv for pc frequencies—to rework a private pc right into a satellite tv for pc receiver. This fashion, they might watch and retailer media domestically in addition to obtain information from devoted channels.
Many Iranian residents have free-to-air satellite tv for pc dishes, like those on this residence constructing in Tehran, and may thus obtain Toosheh transmissions, giving them a lifeline throughout web blackouts.Morteza Nikoubazl/NurPhoto/Getty Photos
Toosheh, a Persian phrase that interprets to “knapsack,” is the brainchild of Mehdi Yahyanejad, an Iranian-American technologist and entrepreneur. Yahyanejad cofounded NetFreedom Pioneers in 2012. He proposed that the satellite-computer connections enabled by a DVB card could possibly be re-created in software program, eliminating the necessity for specialised {hardware}. He added a easy digital interface to the software program to make it simple for anybody to make use of. The subsequent breakthrough got here when the NFP crew developed a brand new switch protocol that tips odd satellite tv for pc receivers into downloading information alongside audio and video content material. Thus, Toosheh was born.
Satellite tv for pc TV makes use of a file system known as an MPEG transport stream that enables a number of audio, video, or information layers to be packaged right into a single stream file. Once you tune in to a satellite tv for pc channel and choose an audio possibility or closed captions, you’re accessing information saved in numerous components of this stream. The NFP crew’s perception was that, by piggybacking on considered one of these layers, Toosheh might ship an MPEG stream that included paperwork, movies, and extra.
HOW TOOSHEH WORKS: At NetFreedom Pioneers, content material curators pull collectively recordsdata—information articles, movies, audio, and software program [1]. Toosheh’s encoder software program [2] compresses the recordsdata right into a bundle, in .ts format, creating an MPEG transport stream [3]. From there, it’s uploaded to a server for transmission [4] by way of a free-to-air TV channel on a Yahsat satellite tv for pc that’s positioned over the Center East to supply regional protection [5]. Satellite tv for pc receivers [6] straight seize the info streams, that are downloaded to computer systems, smartphones, and different units, and decoded by Toosheh software program [8].Chris Philpot
A satellite tv for pc receiver can’t inform the distinction between our information and regular satellite tv for pc audio and video information because it solely “sees” the MPEG streams, not what’s encoded on them. This implies the info will be downloaded and browse, watched, and saved on native units akin to computer systems, smartphones, or storage units. What’s extra, the system is completely personal: Nobody can detect whether or not somebody has obtained information by way of Toosheh; there are not any traceable logs of person exercise.
Toosheh doesn’t present web entry, however reasonably delivers curated information by way of satellite tv for pc expertise. The elemental distinction lies in the way in which customers work together with the system. Not like conventional web providers, the place you kind a request into your browser and obtain information in response, Toosheh operates extra like a mixture of radio and tv, presenting info in a magazine-like format. Customers don’t make requests; as a substitute, they obtain 1 to five gigabytes of prepackaged, fastidiously chosen information.
Entry to info is just not solely about information or politics, however about publicity to potentialities.
Throughout this 12 months’s web blackout, we distributed official statements from Iranian opposition chief Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi and the U.S. authorities. We offered first-aid tutorials for medics and injured protesters. We despatched uncensored information stories from BBC Persian, Iran Worldwide, IranWire, VOA Farsi, and others. We additionally shared important software program packages together with anticensorship and antisurveillance instruments, together with how-to guides to assist folks securely hook up with Starlink satellite tv for pc terminals, permitting them to remain protected and nameless as they despatched their very own communications.
The best way to Fight Sign Interference
As a result of Toosheh depends on one-way satellite tv for pc broadcasts, it evades the same old ways governments use to dam web entry. Nevertheless, it stays weak to satellite signal jamming.
The Iranian authorities is infamous for deploying sign jamming, particularly in bigger cities. In 2009, the federal government used uplink interference, which assaults the satellite tv for pc in orbit by beaming robust noise within the frequency of the satellite tv for pc’s receiver. This makes it unimaginable for the satellite tv for pc to tell apart the data it’s presupposed to obtain. Nevertheless, as a result of one of these assault briefly disables the whole satellite tv for pc, Iran was threatened with worldwide sanctions and in 2012 stopped utilizing the tactic .
A graph of community connectivity in Iran reveals that on 9 January 2026, web entry dropped from almost one hundred pc to 0. Samuel Boivin/NurPhoto/Getty Photos
The present methodology, known as terrestrial jamming, makes use of antennas put in at increased elevations than the encircling buildings to beam robust noise over a particular space within the frequency vary of family receivers. This assault is efficient in preserving a few of the packets from arriving and damaging others, successfully jamming the transmission. However it’s short-range and requires vital energy, so it’s unimaginable to implement nationwide. There are all the time folks someplace who can nonetheless watch TV, obtain from Toosheh, or tune right into a satellite tv for pc radio regardless of the jamming. Even so, we wished a workaround that might maintain our transmissions broadly accessible.
NFP’s answer was so as to add redundancy, related in precept to a data-storage approach known as RAID (redundant array of unbiased disks). As a substitute of sending each bit of knowledge as soon as, we ship additional info that enables lacking or corrupted packets to be reconstructed. Below regular circumstances, we regularly use 5 % of our bandwidth for this redundancy. During times of lively jamming, we enhance that to as a lot as 25 to 30 %, bettering the possibilities that customers can get better full recordsdata regardless of interference.
From Disaster Response to Public Entry
Toosheh initially got here on-line in 2015 in Iran and Afghanistan. Its full potential, nevertheless, was first realized in the course of the 2019 protests in Iran, which noticed probably the most widespread web shutdown previous to the blackout this 12 months. Wired known as the 2019 shutdown “probably the most extreme disconnection” tracked by NetBlocks in any nation when it comes to its “technical complexity and breadth.” Our expertise helped hundreds of individuals keep knowledgeable. We despatched essential native updates, legal-aid guides, digital safety instruments, and unbiased information to satellite tv for pc receivers everywhere in the nation, seeing a sixfold enhance in our person base.
When that wave of protests subsided, the federal government allowed some communication providers to return. Folks have been once more capable of entry the free web utilizing VPNs and different antifilter software program that allowed them to bypass restrictions. Toosheh then grew to become a public entry level for information, instructional materials, and leisure past authorities filtering.
Toosheh’s impression is commonly private. A touring trainer in western Iran instructed NFP that he commonly distributed Toosheh recordsdata to college students in distant villages. One package deal included footage of feminine athletes competing within the Olympic Video games, one thing by no means broadcast in Iran. For one younger woman, it was the primary time she realized ladies might compete professionally in sports activities. That second underscores a broader reality: Entry to info is just not solely about information or politics, however about publicity to potentialities.
The Price of Toosheh
Not like internet-based programs, Toosheh’s operational value stays fixed whatever the variety of customers. A single TV satellite tv for pc in geostationary earth orbit, deployed and maintained by a global firm akin to Eutelsat, can broadcast to a complete continent with no enhance in value to audiences. What’s extra, the startup value for customers isn’t excessive: A satellite tv for pc dish and receiver in Iran prices lower than US $50, which is reasonably priced to many. And it prices nothing for folks to make use of Toosheh’s service and obtain its recordsdata.
We purpose not simply to construct a software for censorship circumvention, however to redefine entry itself.
Nevertheless, working the service is expensive: NetFreedom Pioneers pays tens of hundreds of {dollars} a month for satellite tv for pc bandwidth. We had obtained funding from the U.S. State Division, however in August of 2025, that funding ended, forcing us to droop providers in Iran.
Then the December protests occurred, and broadcasting to Iran grew to become an pressing precedence. To show Toosheh again on, we would have liked roughly $50,000 a month. With the help of a handful of personal donors, we have been capable of meet these prices and maintain operations in Iran for just a few months, although our future there and elsewhere is unsure.
Satellites Towards Censorship
Toosheh’s revival in Iran got here alongside NFP’s ongoing help for deployments of Starlink, a satellite tv for pc web service that enables customers to attach on to satellites reasonably than counting on home networks, which the federal government can shut down. Not like Toosheh’s one-way broadcasts, Starlink offers full two-way web entry, enabling customers to ship messages, add movies, and talk with the skin world.
In 2022, we began gathering donations to purchase Starlink terminals for Iran. We now have delivered greater than 300 of the roughly 50,000 there, enabling residents to ship encrypted updates and movies to us from contained in the nation. As a result of the expertise is banned by the federal government, entry stays restricted and carries danger; Iranian authorities have not too long ago arrested Starlink customers and sellers. And in contrast to Toosheh’s receive-only broadcasts, Starlink terminals transmit alerts again to orbit, making a radio footprint that may doubtlessly be detected.
The web shutdown in Iran continued after the assaults by Israel and the USA started in late February, stopping Iranians from speaking with the skin world and with each other.Fatemeh Bahrami/Anadolu/Getty Photos
Wanting forward, we envision Toosheh changing into a foundational a part of international digital resilience. It’s uncensored, untraceable, and proof against authorities shutdowns. As a result of Toosheh is downlink solely, it might typically really feel onerous to elucidate the worth of this expertise to these residing within the free world, these accustomed to open web entry. But, folks residing underneath censorship have few different decisions when there’s a digital blackout.
At present, NFP is creating new options like clever content material curation and robotically prioritizing information packages primarily based on geographic or situational wants. And we’re experimenting with native sharing instruments that permit customers who obtain Toosheh broadcasts to redistribute these recordsdata by way of Wi-Fi hotspots or different offline networks, which might lengthen the system’s attain to catastrophe zones, battle areas, and climate-impacted areas the place infrastructure could also be destroyed.
We’re additionally different use circumstances. Following the Taliban’s return to energy in Afghanistan, NetFreedom Pioneers designed a satellite-based system to ship instructional supplies. Our purpose is to allow personal, large-scale distribution of coursework to anybody—together with the ladies who’re banned from Afghanistan’s faculties. The system is technically prepared however has but to safe funding for deployment.
We purpose not simply to construct a software for censorship circumvention, however to redefine entry itself. Whether or not in an Iranian metropolis underneath surveillance, a Guatemalan village with out web, or a refugee camp in East Africa, Toosheh presents a strong and sensible mannequin for delivering important info with out counting on weak or costly networks.
Toosheh is a reminder that innovation doesn’t need to imply complexity. Generally, probably the most transformative concepts are the only, like delivering information by way of the sky, quietly and affordably, into the palms of those that want it most.
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