Nearly a hundred Starlink network internet terminals are active in Iran, SpaceX chief Elon Musk said Monday.
The American billionaire had promised in September to install the Starlink satellite network in Iran at a time when the Iranian authorities are increasingly restricting access to the Internet.
“Soon 100 active Starlinks in Iran,” Musk tweeted on Monday.
Starlink has a network of more than 2,000 small satellites in low earth orbit that help provide Internet access. Terrestrial terminals are then connected to routers which make it possible to generate wifi and thus internet access.
Since the beginning of the war in Ukraine, SpaceX has delivered thousands of terminals there, thus ensuring an Internet connection. Around 25,000 terminals have thus been deployed in the country to date.
Protests have rocked Iran since the September 16 death of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Iranian Kurd, following her arrest in Tehran by its police. Since then, hundreds of people have been killed, thousands arrested and two 23-year-old men hanged.
Iranian authorities have since restricted access to Instagram and WhatsApp — until this fall the only social networks still available — and VPNs, which Iranians use to access banned websites.