Iranian activists have received a significant boost in their efforts to share details about the ongoing, violent protests across the nation. SpaceX’s Starlink satellite internet service has reduced its fees, enabling more people to bypass the Iranian government’s stringent measures to block information from reaching the outside world, according to activists on Wednesday.

This development comes after Iran’s government imposed a complete telecommunications and internet blackout on January 8. This drastic measure aimed to suppress communication as protests intensified, largely driven by the Islamic Republic’s economic struggles and the plummeting value of its currency.

Although SpaceX, led by Elon Musk, has not formally announced the fee reduction and did not respond to requests for comments, activists informed The Associated Press that Starlink has been freely accessible to any Iranian citizens possessing the necessary receivers since Tuesday.

“Starlink has been indispensable,” stated Mehdi Yahyanejad, an Iranian activist whose organization, Net Freedom Pioneers, has been instrumental in smuggling the devices into Iran. He cited a video released on Sunday that depicted rows of bodies at a forensic medical center near Tehran.

“That video, showing hundreds of bodies, was only possible because of Starlink,” Yahyanejad explained from Los Angeles. “Those images provided a stark reality check for many, showing them firsthand the severity of the situation.”

Since the outbreak of demonstrations December 28, the death toll has risen to more than 2500 people, primarily protesters but also security personnel, according to the US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency.

Starlink is banned in Iran by telecommunication regulations, as the country never authorized the importation, sale or use of the devices. Activists fear they could be accused of helping the US or Israel by using Starlink and charged with espionage, which can carry the death penalty.

Cat-and-mouse as authorities hunt for Starlink devices

The first units were smuggled into Iran in 2022 during protests over the country’s mandatory headscarf law, after Musk got the Biden administration to exempt the Starlink service from Iran sanctions.

Since then, more than 50,000 units are estimated to have been sneaked in, with people going through great lengths to conceal them, using virtual private networks while on the system to hide IP addresses and taking other precautions, said Ahmad Ahmadian, the executive director of Holistic Resilience, a Los Angeles-based organisation that was responsible for getting some of the first Starlink units into Iran.

Starlink is a global internet network that relies on some 10,000 satellites orbiting Earth. Subscribers need to have equipment, including an antenna requires a line of site to the satellite, so must be deployed in the open, where it could be spotted by authorities. Many Iranians disguise them as solar panels, Ahmadian said.

After efforts to shut down communications during the 12-day war with Israel in June proved to be not terribly effective, Iranian security services have taken more “extreme tactics” now to both jam Starlink’s radio signals and GPS systems, Ahmadian said in a phone interview. After Holistic Resilience passed on reports to SpaceX, Ahmadian said, the company pushed a firmware update that helped circumvent the new countermeasures.

Security services also rely on informers to tell them who might be using Starlink, search internet and social media traffic for signs it has been used, and there have been reports they have raided apartments with satellite dishes.

“There has always been a cat-and-mouse game,” said Ahmadian, who fled Iran himself in 2012, after serving time in prison for student activism.

“The government is using every tool in its toolbox.”

Still, Ahmadian noted that the government jamming attempts had only been effective in certain urban areas, suggesting that security services lack the resources to block Starlink more broadly.

A free Starlink could increase the flow of information out of Iran

Iran did begin to allow people to call out internationally on Tuesday via their mobile phones, but calls from outside the country into Iran remain blocked.

Compared to protests in 2019, when lesser measures by the government were able to effectively stifle information reaching the rest of the world for more than a week, Ahmadian said the proliferation of Starlink has made it impossible to prevent communications. He said the flow could increase now that the service has been made free.

“This time around they really shut it down, even fixed landlines were not working,” he said.

“But despite this, the information was coming out and it also shows how distributed this community of Starlink users is in the country.”

Musk has made Starlink free for use during several natural disasters, and Ukraine has relied heavily on the service since Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022. It was initially funded by SpaceX and later through an American government contract.

Musk raised concerns over the power of such a system being in the hands of one person, after he refused to extend Ukraine’s Starlink coverage to support a planned Ukrainian counterattack in Russian-occupied Crimea.

As a proponent of Starlink for Iran, Ahmadian said the Crimea decision was a wake-up call for him, but that he couldn’t see any reason why Musk might be inclined to act similarly in Iran.

“Looking at the political Elon, I think he would have more interest … in a free Iran as a new market,” he said.

Julia Voo, who heads the International Institute for Strategic Studies’ Cyber Power and Future Conflict Program in Singapore, said there is a risk in becoming reliant on one company as a lifeline, as it “creates a single point of failure,” though currently there are no comparable alternatives.

China has already been exploring ways to hunt and destroy Starlink satellites, and Voo said the more effective Starlink proves itself at penetrating “government-mandated terrestrial blackouts, the more states will be observing.”

“It’s just going to result in more efforts to broaden controls over various ways of communication, for those in Iran and everywhere else watching,” she said.