Iran nets another revolt

The Iranian government may be draconian, but the internet remains uncensored, writes Ben Hammersley

Thursday February 21, 2002
The Guardian

Meeting girls is easy this way," said Amir, as he continued typing, "You can be relaxed no worries."

Amir, manager of my guesthouse, and local scoundrel, is one of the 1.3m internet users in Iran. This figure has risen from just 2,000 users five years ago.

"In Iran it is sometimes difficult to meet girls," he went on. "But on the internet, there is no pressure." Everything, from news, to games, to chat is now freely available. And it is easy for Iranians to connect to the internet, if they have their own computers.

However, most of the cybercafes, or "Coffeenets" as they are called, were shut down by the governmennt last year. The reason: Voice Chat.

No. Really. Voice Chat the instant messaging add-on that enables you speak to your buddy as well as type messages. So many people were using it, instead of their more expensive telephones, that the loss of revenue at the nationally-owned phone company was too great for the government to bear. The police were sent to shut the cafes down, and forced those who wanted to stay in business to apply for a special licence.

They had good reason to worry. Log on to Yahoo and it is easy to see their voice-chat system is dominated by Iranian users. At chat.yahoo.com the user-created chatroom listings are indicative: rooms such as "Iranian Boys and Girls in Iran", "Isfahan Love" and "IranMashad" occupy the entire first three pages.

This is not to say that the government is totally against the internet. President Khatami even had his own personal site during the 1997 elections, the results of which were announced on the web as it happened, and now most government departments have their own pages. Even the clerics in the notoriously conservative holy city of Mashad are busy building homepages. The internet, they say, is a gift to spread the word of the Prophet.

And contrary to expectation, the internet in Iran is not censored: at every internet connection I tried, I was able to easily and speedily access all the main news sites and a large number of porn sites. Many Iranian ISPs are now even openly advertising themselves as "Uncensored, No Filters".

While there is concern that porn, and things offensive to Islam, are freely available, no one has yet decided to filter it. Opposition political parties are also given free reign.

"Thirty years ago, governments could keep information from the people," says Mohammad Ali Abtahi, President Khatami's chief of staff said recently, "Now, borders have gone away."

Getting online in Iran is easy. Cards giving 10 hours' prepaid internet access, with a scratch panel to reveal the temporary username and password, are readily available. Full access to the internet can be secured for about 50p an hour. There are even UK-style unlimited usage plans, with ParsOnline, the first ISP in Iran to offer 56k dialup access, selling cards that give unlimited access for £25 a month, or every night, 2am to 10am, for less than £5.

Indeed, internet access, in Tehran at least, is perhaps more sophisticated than that found in the UK. ParsOnline also offer Assymetric Digital Subscriber Line (ADSL) connections at 2Mbps, four times faster than that available to home users here, and for people out of the ADSL catchment area, there are wireless links available, running at 5Mbps, something unheard of in the UK.

So, if internet access is simple to arrange, what about the computers themselves?

Just off central Tehran's EnqelabStreet, in a specialist shopping arcade dedicated to hardware, sits Mighty ComputerStore. There, while copying the entire Adobe product range onto a CD-Rom for £1.50, Hamid, the manager, explained the latest craze.

"There's a sort of fever here in Iran," he said, "All the families who can afford it have a computer. All of the children are taking classes, and we sell a lot of educational software. Parents come in with their children and buy games."

According to Hamid, the software is shipped from Malaysia, where factories specialise in cracking copy-protected software and the mass-copying of CD-Roms.

According to the Business Software Alliance, the international anti-piracy organisation, last year, more than 300 Malay companies were taken to court for piracy. Their pirate versions are so cheap, and so rapidly brought to market, that original software is hard to sell: only 30% of software in Malaysia is an original copy. In Iran, that figure is close to zero - an American trade embargo means stateside software producers, including Microsoft, are prohibited from selling software in Iran.

But, despite not much getting through from the United States, I found plenty of up-to-date equipment for sale: high-end graphics cards, motherboards, and network cards can be bought in a Tehran bazaar for less than you can find in the UK.

But for all the hardware, software sales, voice applications and chatrooms, within Iran, one area is not being covered: e-commerce. The lack of credit cards, and a general lack of chain stores and mass distribution means an Iranian Amazon.com has yet to appear. No matter says Hamid: "Many people have friends abroad," he says. "If I want something I have it sent to my aunt in California, who can post it to me."

Internet companies are starting up, however. The government estimates that 800,000 jobs will be created in the internet field in the next five years. This is something they are very keen to encourage. Not only will it help with Iran's 12% unemployment, but an internet company requires little space, and brings in more money, than similar light industry.

Such is the importance of computing to Iran's new economy, that hard drive and computer case prices are listed in the local newspapers' business sections as Commodities: Seagate SCSI drives are given the same standing as copper, or oil barrels.

However, so many people are studying computing there is a fear that even with such large expansion, there will not be enough jobs to go around.

Hamid again: "Everyone is going to school for such a long time," he said. "Maybe it would be better for them to learn a job first."

The massive university intake, however, is transforming a generation into internet users. Every student has their own email address, and computer hire is subsidised. Once they graduate, Hamid says, they are all so used to emailing each other, and arranging their social lives with instant messaging, that they immediately buy a computer and get back online.

But perhaps the best thing about the internet in Iran comes back to Amir. After he'd finished trying to chat up a girl somewhere in cyberspace he lent over his desk:

"What is good," he said, "is we can talk to everyone. The politicians can argue, but the young people can always be friends on the internet."