Iran bans fast internet to cut west’s influence
Iran’s Islamic government has opened a new front in its drive to stifle domestic political dissent and combat the influence of western culture - by banning high-speed internet links. In a blow to the country’s estimated 5m internet users, service providers have been told to restrict online speeds to 128 kilobytes a second and been forbidden from offering fast broadband packages. The move by Iran’s telecommunications regulator will make it more difficult to download foreign music, films and television programmes, which the authorities blame for undermining Islamic culture among the younger generation. It will also impede efforts by political opposition groups to organise by uploading information on to the net. A petition branding the high-speed ban as ‘backward and unprincipled’ bearing more than 1,000 signatures is to be sent to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The telecoms regulator declined to explain the decision but said it was taken by ‘a collection of policy-makers’. However, Etemad, a pro-reformist newspaper, suggested it was part of an official campaign to stem a western ‘cultural invasion’. (The Guardian,October 18, 2006)
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An effort to ban a western ‘cultural invasion’ or an Iranian ‘cultural importation’?
Comment by Ken — October 18, 2006 @ 8:12 pm