“White SIMs” for the power elite, different levels of “Internet Pro” for the rich and favored, domestic intranet for the plebes.
The Iranian regime’s rollout of a new “tiered internet” system threatens to leave the World Wide Web inaccessible to millions of Iranians who are unable to afford it, transforming internet access from a fundamental (if often impaired) utility into a restricted privilege.
As Iran’s internet blackout reaches its 56th day April 24—a blackout from which thousands of regime members and their cronies have been exempted—the government is reintroducing limited online access to a wider pool of whitelisted institutions and individuals. Basic access to the global web is no longer assumed, but reserved for approved users. The new framework rations internet access according to security priorities, political compliance, and wealth. It leaves most Iranians confined to a tightly surveilled domestic network, while maintaining global access involves paying far higher prices for approved service or for the circumnavigation tools needed to bypass government restrictions.
Iran’s previous approach was to keep the public connected to the “filternet,” the global internet with heavy censorship, involving an ever-expanding blacklist of websites blocked to almost everyone in the country. Ordinary Iranians accessed the internet through broadband and mobile phone contracts, bypassing censorship using VPNs, whose costs have risen astronomically since January.
As for the country’s elites, a limited number of “white SIM” cards are issued to approved individuals, giving them unfettered internet access. To acquire such SIM cards, government officials and other pro-regime figures including journalists and company owners must provide their business licenses and identity details for processing through an opaque vetting system before gaining approval. Unlike standard users, those with white SIMs—numbering somewhere in the tens of thousands—may freely access platforms such as X and Instagram on their mobile phones.
Meanwhile, the regime has been quietly building out its own domestic intranet, the National Information Network (NIN). During the shutdown, this infrastructure replaced the “filternet” as the default connection for the public, effectively blocking access to the World Wide Web. This censored-internet model is a new, “discriminatory architecture,” according to Filterbaan, an internet freedom watchdog group, “with the majority of users being kept solely within Iran’s restricted, highly surveilled, and tightly controlled NIN.”
Multiplying classes of privilege and control
After nearly two months of blackout, in which only the small number of Iranians with white SIM cards were able to access the internet, the regime is now rolling out a secondary form of privileged access. Known as “Internet Pro” or “Stable Internet,” the service was described by Information and Communications Technology Minister Sattar Hashemi in a Shargh Daily op-ed on April 14.
The “tiered” system of Internet Pro allows approved individuals and institutions varied access to censored websites based on their level of vetting. YouTube, for example, may be available to a regime-affiliated business with a high level of clearance, while a student accessing the platform through their university account might only be able to access Google and Google Scholar.
Behind the scenes, a lucrative market has emerged. Those with the right connections are able to sell global internet access at high margins. Though they are referred to as “VPNs,” the products are actually Internet Pro packages that come with a data cap, at a cost of around $2.50 per gigabyte, according to sources inside the country. The types of global internet websites accessible through these blackmarket data packages vary, so buyers still require a second, classic VPN to fully bypass censorship. Since January, the cost of a classic VPN had been as high as 800,000 toman per GB, an IT expert said.
“They are making a killing, selling internet by the gigabyte,” an Iran-based information technology expert told Resanegar, Tehran Bureau’s economic unit, describing a system dependent on privileged infrastructure and insider access.
Over time, the market “has matured and is starting to resemble an established business” as more suppliers join in and prices gradually converge, they added. But, as access to Internet Pro becomes available to a wider group of privileged users, there is growing concern about the prohibitive cost of access, which can easily surpass the average day laborer’s monthly wage.
“If you were to use 10–15 GB per month, the cost would equal the base salary of a government job,” said the IT expert, who reported spending the equivalent of around $200 on less than 50 GB of usage over the past two months.
An additional hurdle to access is the payment system. As the value of the rial plummets, internet service providers require payments in US dollars through cryptocurrency wallets. Due to sanctions and exchange restrictions, these transactions are unattainable for a majority of the public. “That’s where this market is now. If you don’t have crypto, you simply can’t connect,” the IT expert said. “A small number of people get internet; the rest essentially do not have access.” In other words, as the source put it, “an ideal model for the regime.”
As a consequence, much of the population has effectively vanished from the digital sphere. “There is a very large group that is completely cut off … they have disappeared,” said the IT expert, arguing that those unable to afford the cost of access are simply no longer heard. In contrast, those with privileged access remain visible. “You can easily spot [the white SIM users] on X and they are all aligned with the government.”
Exorbitant costs for access
In practice, Internet Pro represents a controlled expansion of access—but only for specific professional sectors. According to the IT expert, eligibility is limited to:
- Registered companies and businesses
- Startups and technology professionals
- Traders and transportation companies
- Academic and research institutions
Physicians may also be included, with some already receiving activation messages, according to ShayaNews, an Iran-based news website. Freelancers and individuals without formally recognized employment in approved sectors are excluded from applying, said the IT expert.
The InternetPro service is available exclusively via SIM cards and does not extend to home internet connections. Its price is roughly three times what Iranians were used to paying for home internet, portending another significant barrier to access. While standard domestic internet access is priced at approximately 8,000 tomans per gigabyte and largely restricted to local websites, Internet Pro packages are considerably more expensive.
- Irancell offers a one-year, 50GB international package for around 2 million tomans.
- Rightel provides a similar package priced at 2,176,000 tomans, available to registered businesses upon formal request.
- Hamrah Aval (MCI) charges approximately 40,000 tomans per gigabyte, amounting to roughly 2 million tomans for 50GB, targeting business owners and university faculty.
Access also requires identity verification and administrative approval through telecom operators, further limiting availability. According to ShayaNews, the new system has significantly reduced or entirely blocked ordinary users’ access to the broader internet. Instead, NIN users are largely confined to a limited set of “whitelisted” websites approved by authorities.
Even these restricted services, however, appear unreliable. Social media users and local reports indicate that access to whitelisted sites is inconsistent, with frequent outages, slow speeds, and disrupted connections. In addition, users of the Internet Pro package are only allowed to use 5 GB of data per 24 hours, the IT expert said.
Domestic social’s “worn-out coat”
Meanwhile, businesses whose marketing strategies depend on major social media platforms are being pushed onto domestic alternatives as global services become inaccessible. Many have migrated from WhatsApp to local apps like Bale or Eitaa out of fear that, without any social media capacity, they would lose their customers entirely. “It is like a worn-out coat in winter,” the IT expert said. “It is better than nothing.”
Despite the visible economic damage, the system shows little sign of reversal, the source said. “Unfortunately, I think they can keep going like this, because they simply don’t care.”