Iran is losing an estimated $1.56 million every hour because of its state-imposed internet blackout, draining its struggling economy and disrupting life for more than 90 million people, according to an internet privacy analyst.
The prolonged disruptions originated amid spiraling protests through January with losses he claimed were continuing even after partial connectivity was restored.
“The current blackout is costing Iran an estimated $37.4 million per day, or $1.56 million every hour,” Simon Migliano, head of research at PrivacyCo, told Fox News Digital. “The full internet blackout itself cost Iran more than $780 million, and the subsequent strict filtering continues to have a significant additional economic impact.”
“Iran has already drained $215 million from its economy in 2025 by disrupting internet access,” the internet privacy and security analyst added.
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Migliano said his estimates were calculated using the NetBlocks COST tool, an economic model that measures the immediate impact on a nation’s gross domestic product when its digital economy is forced offline.
The model assesses direct losses to productivity, online transactions and remote work, drawing on data from the World Bank, the International Telecommunication Union, Eurostat and the U.S. Census Bureau.
Iranian authorities abruptly cut off communications on the night of Jan. 8 amid widespread protests against the clerical regime.
While officials later restored much of the country’s domestic bandwidth, as well as local and international phone calls and SMS messaging, the population is largely unable to freely access the internet because of heavy state filtering.
“The recent 579% surge in VPN demand reflects a scramble for digital survival,” Migliano said before describing how even when access is briefly restored, the internet remains “heavily censored and effectively unusable without circumvention tools such as VPNs.”
“We can see spikes showing that as soon as connectivity returned, users immediately sought VPNs to reach sites and services outside the state-controlled network, including global platforms such as WhatsApp and Telegram that remain otherwise inaccessible,” he added.
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“Sustained demand — averaging 427% above normal levels — indicates Iranians are stockpiling circumvention tools in anticipation of further blackouts,” Migliano said.
“The usual strategy is to download as many free tools as possible and cycle between them. It becomes a cat-and-mouse game, as the government blocks individual VPN servers and providers rotate IP addresses to stay ahead of the censors,” he added.
Iran’s minister of information and communications technology, Sattar Hashemi, acknowledged the economic toll caused by the blackout tactics.
He said recent outages were inflicting roughly “5,000 billion rials” a day in losses to the digital economy and nearly 50 trillion rials on the wider economy, according to Iran International.
“Iran’s three-week internet blackout may have been lifted, but connectivity remains severely disrupted still,” Migliano claimed.
“Access is still heavily filtered. It is restricted to a government-approved ‘whitelist’ of sites and apps and the connection itself remains highly unstable throughout the day,” he added.
Iran bleeds $1.56M every hour from internet blackout restrictions amid economic crisis: analyst 2026 IUSTITIA.BG – Investigations 2009-2025 2026-02-04 01:22:22 Latest news World news Country news Most important news latest news most important latest of the day Justice Petar Nizamov Feathers Petar Nizamov- Feathers Justice bg iustitia.bg iustitia iusticia usticia investigation Burgas Bulgaria news news of the last hour news of the day news of today Bulgaria news The news from Bulgaria blitz news top news most important most commented latest news Boyko Borisov news weather coronavirus news news weather facebook youtube facebook instagram news today news of the last minutes news today today news news bg news leading news hot news bg news site for news all news news bg news of the last hour latest latest news bg news of today news today news today news of the last hour latest news today news bg news news 24 hours news vesti bg novini news world bird bg bivol bg bivol trud bg novini latest news today novinite bg news hello bulgaria political party coat of arms delyan peevski scandalous Bulgarian National Television Free Europe Television scandal exclusive live tv live right now tv tv online tv program bg live now tv news online tv online live court Burgas court Burgas district court Burgas court Burgas district court Burgas district court Burgas appellate court Burgas prosecutor Burgas prosecutor’s office Burgas district prosecutor’s office Burgas district prosecutor’s office Burgas district prosecutor’s office Burgas district prosecutor’s office Burgas district prosecutor’s office Burgas district prosecutor’s office Prosecutor General Ivan Geshev Prosecutor Geshev Tsatsarov Ministry of Internal Affairs Burgas ODMR Burgas ODPR Burgas police Burgas district police Burgas prosecutor Tsatsarov SGS cases Varna court chairman of the SGS court decisions on civil cases decisions on cases Plovdiv court decision of the court decisions cases Varna court criminal cases district district court decisions work in the court SGS chairman of the SGS judges Sofia court post judges Plovdiv court Plovdiv judges Plovdiv Supreme Court Inspectorate Supreme Court Supreme Judicial Council lawyer lawyer criminal cases lawyer civil cases lawyer marriage cases lawyer administrative criminal law criminal process civil law civil process administrative law constitutional law
