Member of the Virtual Council: 60% of Internet Bandwidth in Iran is Used by Telegram

A member of Iran's Supreme Council of Cyberspace states that "60%" of the internet bandwidth in the country is allocated to the application "Telegram," and that "national sovereignty" must be "implemented" in cyberspace. The Nasim Online website reported on Thursday, August 12, that Mohammad Hassan Entazari, a member of this council, made this announcement at the third national conference "Season of Connection" held in Mashhad. Mr. Entazari deemed this level of bandwidth allocation as a "high figure" and said: "When such bandwidth is allocated to Telegram, officials' attention to this area must be drawn." He noted that the rapid "transformations" in cyberspace do not align with the speed of "decision-making" in the Islamic Republic and called for the "creation of a new legal system in cyberspace." This real member of the Supreme Council of Cyberspace also mentioned that the "formation of a national information network" in Iran is not being pursued so that "all local information is stored within the country." According to him, "financial information must be stored within our country, and this requires tools that, if realized, this matter will also be achieved." Mr. Entazari believes that "cyber sovereignty must be in our hands so that data from foreign messaging networks, which are not under the country's sovereignty, is not handed over to foreigners." Officials of the Islamic Republic have been intermittently discussing the necessity of launching a "national information network" in Iran for years, but so far they have not succeeded in creating such a network, and as this official has acknowledged, this plan is no longer even being pursued. A significant group of clerics and military personnel ruling Iran believe that the internet and social networks are tools of "soft warfare" and "espionage" by the West against the Islamic Republic and that strict oversight must be applied to this space. Currently, thousands of websites and many popular global social networks are filtered in Iran at the request and order of judicial and security officials, and users of these networks can only access them using VPNs. Nevertheless, even the necessity of using VPNs has not diminished the interest of Iranian users in this regard, and a large population from within Iran is present on these networks. Among them, the application "Telegram" with 13 million users in Iran is recognized as the most widely used mobile social network in the country, and the judiciary's efforts to block it have not yet succeeded. Government officials have also been making extensive efforts for years to transfer part of the servers of this mobile messaging network to Iran, stating that the "Telegram" officials are also ready to cooperate with them in this regard. The managers of the Telegram application have not yet responded to this matter.