While nearly 90 million Iranians endure what is described as the largest complete internet shutdown currently active anywhere in the world, a small constellation of connected entities - linked to powerful institutional shareholders in the country's telecom infrastructure - is reportedly generating enormous profits from the crisis they help sustain. A detailed analytical report by journalist and corruption researcher Yashar Soltani argues that Iran's internet restrictions are not merely a security policy gone too far, but a functioning economic arrangement that benefits those with the authority to end it.
The report, which examines the ownership structure of Iran's dominant mobile operators, the mechanics of the VPN black market, and the identities of those who retain unrestricted access during nationwide blackouts, presents a portrait of what Soltani calls the "monetization of access" - a system in which restriction itself has become a revenue stream.
The Price of Connectivity Reveals the Contradiction
The clearest illustration of the arrangement Soltani describes is a simple price comparison. A standard 50GB mobile data package from Irancell - one that provides no access to the global internet - costs approximately 400,000 Tomans. The same volume of data sold by Hamrah-e Aval (the Mobile Telecommunication Company of Iran) under the "Internet Pro" label, which does include global access, costs 2.5 million Tomans: more than six times as much.
The implied logic is difficult to ignore. If unrestricted internet access constitutes a threat to national security, as officials have repeatedly claimed, then that threat does not disappear when a user pays a higher price. Soltani frames the pricing structure as evidence that the restrictions serve a financial function at least as much as a political one. Many Iranians, he writes, have concluded that powerful interests discovered a highly profitable market and chose to protect it rather than dissolve it.
The "Internet Pro" product has placed the government in a peculiar position. Officially, senior officials have expressed opposition to tiered internet access. In practice, the report argues, the government lacks the authority to change it. Key decisions over Iran's internet architecture are made by Supreme Councils that operate beyond the effective reach of both the elected government and Parliament, and these bodies have no meaningful public accountability structure. The result, as Soltani describes it, is a system engineered to frustrate ordinary users while insulating its beneficiaries from political pressure.
Who Owns the Infrastructure Behind the Restrictions
Approximately 90% of Hamrah-e Aval's shares are held by the Telecommunication Company of Iran (TCI). TCI, despite its formal classification as non-governmental, has a controlling shareholder with unmistakable institutional affiliations. The "Etemad-e Mobin Consortium" holds 50% plus one share of TCI - a majority that grants effective managerial control. That consortium, according to the report, is itself composed of two entities: the Tadbir Economic Development Group, affiliated with the Execution of Imam Khomeini's Order (known as EIKO or Setad), and the Mehr Eqtesad-e Iranian Investment Company, linked to the IRGC Cooperative Foundation.
This ownership structure means that the primary commercial beneficiary of "Internet Pro" pricing - and the broader architecture of restricted versus premium access - is an entity whose major shareholders include two of the most powerful institutional networks in Iran. The remaining TCI shares are split between Justice Shares held by the public and stock market-traded portions, but effective control rests with Etemad-e Mobin. Soltani does not claim these entities directly designed the restriction policy, but his report makes clear that they are the primary financial beneficiaries of it.
A Black Market Kept Deliberately Alive
Since late February 2026, following the escalation of hostilities between Iran and the United States and Israel, access to the global internet has been severed for the third time in the same year. The two earlier blackouts - one linked to domestic unrest in January, the other to a 12-day conflict with Israel - had already destabilized connectivity through much of the preceding months. The current shutdown, stretching into its second month, is characterized in the report as the most extensive complete internet blackout occurring anywhere in the world at the time of writing.
During each shutdown, a structured hierarchy of connectivity emerges. Soltani identifies three categories of actors who remain connected and profit from others' exclusion:
- Starlink owners: Individuals with satellite internet equipment - ownership of which has been criminalized - who sell VPN access at extreme prices on the black market. The legal risk has not suppressed the market; it has simply driven up prices further.
- White SIM card holders: Individuals placed on institutional "whitelists" whose mobile internet bypasses all filters. According to the report, these users can purchase static IP addresses from Hamrah-e Aval or Irancell, create internet tunnels, and sell VPN access during crises at rates that generate substantial income. An analysis of location data shared on X reportedly revealed a significant number of Iranians accessing the unrestricted internet during blackout periods, including, but not limited to, journalists.
- Rent-seeking server owners: Companies and individuals with access to domestic servers that maintain unrestricted global connectivity. Soltani names one operator - Vroute, accessible at www.vroute.org - as an example of a business openly selling VPN services complete with an online payment gateway during the blackout period.
The technical dimension of this market's persistence is, for Soltani, the most damning detail. Cybersecurity professionals cited in the report state that authorities could identify and shut down VPN services with relative speed by monitoring symmetrical traffic patterns - equal volumes of upload and download data being a reliable signature of VPN use. The fact that this capability exists but is not deployed against a market operating in plain sight raises an obvious question: who benefits from the decision not to act?
Restriction as Economic Policy
Iran's experience of internet restriction has a long history, but the pattern Soltani describes represents a structural evolution. What began as politically motivated shutdowns - reactions to protests, conflicts, or perceived threats - has matured into something more durable: an ecosystem in which restriction generates recurring revenue for institutional actors, while the cost of that restriction is distributed entirely across the general public and the businesses that depend on connectivity.
The broader implication of the report is not simply that corruption exists within Iran's telecom sector - that would hardly be surprising. The implication is that the policy of restriction and the market it creates are functionally inseparable. Ending one would require dismantling the other, and dismantling the market would mean eliminating revenue flows that run directly to some of the most institutionally protected entities in the country. Soltani's conclusion is measured but pointed: the black market for internet access in Iran is not a failure of enforcement. It is, in all practical terms, the policy itself.
