Iran’s Latest Internet Blackout Extends to Phones and Starlink
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Amanda Meng, Alberto Dainotti, and Zachary Bischof from Georgia Tech's Internet Intelligence Lab chronicle what many digital rights and internet monitoring groups have assessed as the most sophisticated and severe internet shutdown in Iran’s history in this article written for The Conversation.
The Iranian regime’s internet shutdown, initiated on Jan. 8, 2026, has severely diminished the flow of information out of the country. Without internet access, little news about the national protests that flared between Dec. 30, 2025, and Jan. 13, 2026, and the regime’s violent crackdown has reached the world. Many digital rights and internet monitoring groups have assessed the current shutdown to be the most sophisticated and most severe in Iran’s history.
We are a social scientist and two computer scientists at the Georgia Institute of Technology’s Internet Intelligence Lab who study internet connectivity.
Through the Internet Outage Detection and Analysis project, we have been measuring internet connectivity globally since 2011. The project was motivated by the internet shutdowns during the Arab Spring mass protests that began in December 2010 against Middle Eastern and North African regimes.
The project provides a public dashboard of internet connectivity measurements. Its long view of global internet connectivity offers insight into the Iranian regime’s developing sophistication in controlling information and shutting down the internet in the country.
Our measurements show that Iran has been in a complete internet shutdown since Jan. 8. This is longer than the 48½-hour shutdown in June 2025 during the Israel-Iran war and surpasses the duration of the November 2019 shutdown that lasted almost seven days. Compared to the two weeks of nightly mobile phone network shutdowns in September to October of 2022 during the Women, Life, Freedom protests, this shutdown is more complete by also closing down fixed-line connectivity.
Read the full story from The Conversation for details about how the GT's researchers are using a network telescope to measure internet connectivity.
