By Ali Sheikholeslami

A partial Internet disruption in Iran that began Feb. 1 was caused by a cable cut, the government said, while the political opposition alleged authorities caused the shutdown to limit communication by groups that plan protests on the Feb. 11 anniversary of the Islamic Revolution.

It will be a few days before the government-owned cable in southern Iran is repaired, the state-run Iran newspaper cited Hossein Shafi, a communications infrastructure official, as saying. “An exact date for when the Internet will go back to normal cannot be given,” Shafi said. Thirty percent of the country’s Internet services have been disrupted by the cut, the cause of which is unknown, he said.

The Web site of opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi, a defeated presidential candidate, said officials disrupted the Internet to prevent it from being used to organize rallies on Feb. 11. “The government has found disrupting the Internet its best way to control the circulation of information,” the site, kaleme.org, said referring to shutdowns after protests over the disputed June 12 re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Mousavi and the other main election challenger, Mehdi Karrubi, have called on their backers to continue their protests against the election result on Feb. 11. They allege the vote was rigged, a claim Ahmadinejad denies.

The anniversary of the 1979 revolution that brought Shiite Muslim clerics to power has traditionally been attended by government supporters. Since authorities banned protests as part of a crackdown on dissent following the June balloting, the opposition has called for election protests to coincide with official holidays and religious commemorations, when marches are permitted.

Proxy Servers

Before the election, opposition campaigns circumvented government disruption of the Internet by relying on proxy servers that disguise a user’s location. They also turned to mobile-phone text messages and social-networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter. Mousavi’s Facebook page has more than 125,000 supporters.

Almost 32 per cent of Iranians have access to the Internet, according to a 2008 estimate by International Telecommunication Union, a United Nations agency. The number of users in the country has grown to 32.2 million in 2009 from 250,000 in 2000, said internetworldstats.com, a Web site that gathers data on Internet usage around the world. The Internet is accessed by 48.5 percent of Iranians, making it the nation with the largest number of users in the Middle East, according to the site.

Source: Bloomberg