Political SMS : Blocked during Iran elections
Mobile News: Thurs 6th August 2009
SMS and MMS were suspended in Iran during the June presidential election. On the 12th of June SMS got blocked and Iranians could not send SMS for an entire 19 days. SMS was unavailable yet again following this period, this time for three weeks, but is now available.
SMS and MMS were suspended in Iran during the June presidential election. On the 12th of June SMS got blocked and Iranians could not send SMS for an entire 19 days. SMS was unavailable yet again following this period, this time for three weeks, but is now available.
We provide mobile marketing strategy and delivery, including iphone app development ... click here to find out more
SMS is being used politically used during the pre-election campaigning by grassroots and activists. 60 million SMS are sent on a daily basis in Iran and this number increased rapidly during the election according to state operated mobile operator TCI.
The mobile penetration in Iran is on the rise. 70.5% of the population are connected, however the vast majority is using operators closely linked to the state. TCI has 29.96m users and is state owned, and subsidiary Irancell under 20 million.
Although SMS is working again, rumours say that TCI are accepting inbound international SMS, but that they are "sending back fake delivery reports to foreign gateways" in order to limit cross border communication.
The affairs are not just a revenue problem for operators. The public have started to boycott Nokia handsets because Nokia Siemens Networks (NSN) communication systems have been supplied to the Iranian regime enabling it to intercept SMS and voice calls.
Nokia Siemens Networks states that it "has provided Lawful Intercept capability solely for the monitoring of local voice calls in Iran. Nokia Siemens Networks has not provided any deep packet inspection, web censorship or Internet filtering capability to Iran."
Initially, the monitoring software was not a problem because the software was not being used. However, SMS is increasingly being monitored around the word and this is a big concern to privacy.
Article Links
160 Characters
