The head of the Regulatory and Radio Communications Organization announced that there is no legal prohibition for the publication of international broadband statistics. He did not provide these statistics, but said that the peak traffic consumption has reached 12 terabits per second
According to Iran digital economy annotation, Amir Mohammadzadeh Lajevardi reacted to the report of the Tehran Electronic Commerce Association on the state of the Internet at the “Expert Discussion on the Future of the Internet in Iran” meeting, which was held by the “Data and Governance Laboratory” with the presence of experts and members of the Tehran Electronic Commerce Association.
In response to a criticism regarding the publication of international broadband statistics without providing a number, he said: There is no legal prohibition in this regard. In this recent Iran-Syria game, the peak traffic of 7 terabits per second and a total of 12 terabits per second was recorded, which indicates that 5.5 terabits per second is international traffic. Of course, this is traffic, not bandwidth.
He said: We have 300,000 sanctioned websites and services in the country, which the foreign party is responsible for. This may be one of the scenarios on the other side where the Iranian user is forced to use a VPN for his authorized use.
Lajevardi explained about the role of the private sector in measuring the quality of the user experience: the data of the quality of Internet users is not in our hands, and the private sector can help us to measure it. One of the examples of quality of service is the blocking of Google Play. The private sector should report on the harms and benefits of closing Google Play. He continued: In one of the meetings of the task force, one of the collections of the private sector came and did not defend well, and the opinion of the members who wanted to remove the filter also changed.
He criticized the report of the E-commerce Association: In the Regulatory Organization, we have metrics based on which we measure the state of the network. These metrics are not based on Cloudflare’s systems and others. About 50 countries have been investigated about Cloudflare and we are the 50th. In 47 of these 50 countries, there are Cloudflare CDNs. Or meter.net checks the hundred countries for which there is data. Or even speedtest that requests the nearest server.
The principles of correctness and comprehensiveness should be considered in evaluations. For example, according to the report of the association, 96% of people use filter breakers. A magazine has published this survey on LinkedIn, Twitter and Instagram, whose users use a filter breaker. It would have been better if this poll had been published on domestic platforms as well. The scenario must be clear, do we want to publish a technical and scientific report or a media and political one.
The head of the regulator criticized another part of the report of the E-Commerce Association regarding the Internet outage statistics and said: The report mentions the complete outage of the Internet, and for that, it refers to a reference that did not appear in 2023, the name of the Zionist regime as the countries where the Internet They have cut it off.
This authority cited the Islamic Republic of Iran as the country with the highest number of internet shutdowns, while the honorable presidency itself ordered that the internet should not be shut down during entrance examinations. During last year’s riots, unlike last time, the internet was not completely cut off.
E-commerce Association: We are looking for a solution for cooperation
In this regard, Nima Ghazi, the head of the Tehran Electronic Commerce Association, said: The Ministry of Communications has access to a layer that we do not have. The report also mentions that the Ministry of Communications should publish the data it has. Sometimes there is resistance to these issues.
He continued: We welcomed the progress in the report, but unfortunately, even our welcome was met with a negative reaction. We are looking for a way to cooperate. The aim of the association to publish this report is to achieve a better experience of the Internet in the current situation. On the day we published the report, we published a list of 200 filtered sites. It was on some strange sites like Nvidia.
In this regard, Lajevardi said: “Nvidia was not a filter, but it was among the banned sites that were opened with our efforts.”
Ghazi answered: Why is the situation such that it cannot be recognized that the site is a filter or that it has been cut off from the other side? There should be transparency so that at least we know what to fight about. Or, for example, in the case of Tehran ixp, they promised in the previous meeting that the seal of the site would be raised. You questioned the metrics one by one. A comprehensive measure should be specified.
The head of the Regulatory and Radio Communications Organization stated that the reason for the closure of the Tehran ixp site was DDoS attacks that were carried out on the network infrastructure.
The head of the association also said: Regarding the use of VPN in reports, we try not to publish data without a source. In the first report, a media data was published that had a problem with it. In the next report, we referred to Yektanet’s report, in which the figure of 80% was mentioned. A friend said that this is a political report. I said why? He said, “You drew a diagram, the end of which is connected to the president.” If this is the case, we will drink water and it will be connected to the president.
He also added: All roads are closed and dialogue cannot be established in this way. Filtering mechanisms are not known. Many of these restrictions come from policy-making institutions that have nothing to do with the Ministry of Communications, but the mechanism must be determined. We expect the Ministry of Communications to specify mechanisms for transparency, communication and dialogue.
The Ministry of Communications should convey the voice of public opinion to the appointed institutions
Mohammad Keshvari, the director of the Scientific Analytical Group of Teif, also said in this meeting: “If there is a problem in any of the links of the network, the chain will be weakened.” The first layer is operator access, which requires investment, and the Ministry of Communications has plans for that. The other part goes back to the core operators that they develop themselves.”
He continued: the other part goes back to the government. The core network and data transmission that the telecommunications company is in charge of infrastructure. Previously, there was more transparency in this section, but now it has decreased, such as the removal of Tehran ixp. The next link is the international bandwidth, as far as I know there is no hardware problem, but there is some sensitivity on the increase of the international bandwidth as a policy.
Keshvari also explained about filtering: the problem of filtering as a policy is based on these four rings. A series of sites and services are non-governance tools, which can be understood why they are countered, but countering these services and protocols creates problems in internal services.
He added: The most important is the policy layer. In the layer of senior decision makers, we do not have a clear summary of filtering problems. We have implemented a policy and this policy is so harsh from the point of view of people and users that they easily bypass it. Even many officials of the country are present on filtered platforms. Filtering applies to social networks, websites and even internal services. Filtering social networks has a lot to do with people. The experience of a significant number of users is formed based on filtered services.
This network expert also said: The next layer is the law. The biggest bug is the computer crime law and the lack of transparency of the filtering committee, which is like a darkroom. Even government officials sometimes cleverly get out from under it. The next layer is regulations. It is true that the government is mainly a decision-maker in this layer, but its decision-making role should not be ignored. Most of the decisions of the upper authorities are formed by the decisions of the government. The government can often do things if it wants to.
Keshvari suggested: Publishing such reports by the private sector is a good thing and criticisms should be welcomed. Meetings can be held before this report to extract evaluation indicators. In these cases, evaluation criteria should be specified. It is better to have joint cooperation with centers like ISPA. The Ministry of Communications, as the department closest to public opinion, should represent these issues in front of appointed institutions.
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