Amid nationwide internet disruptions and communications blocks in Iran, some Iranians have been traveling to the border with Turkey in an effort to get online and reach loved ones, BBC News reported on Sunday. According to the report, one man has been selling a service that helps Iranians outside Tehran stay in touch with relatives and friends inside the country. To make the system work, the man uses two phones, one connected to the Iranian network and another to the Turkish network, because international calls into Tehran are blocked, according to the BBC.
Customers outside Iran call the seller’s Turkish phone via WhatsApp, and he then connects them to people inside the country using the Iranian mobile network, the report added. Amid the war with Iran, marked by the Israeli and US operations Roaring Lion and Epic Fury, internet restrictions that began during earlier protests have made it extremely difficult for Iranians to contact people abroad through normal channels.
Even so, many Iranians have clung to any opportunity they can find to communicate. “I’m paying a huge amount of money to be able to connect to the internet to talk to him right now,” Ava, from Tehran, told the BBC. She had been due to marry her fiancé, who lives in Canada, this week, but then the war began. Services designed to bypass internet and phone restrictions are often expensive and unreliable. Even when a connection is made, calls usually last only two or three minutes before cutting out, at a cost of about £28 ($38), according to BBC Persian. (Read More)
