Iranian authorities may be jamming Starlink terminals to further isolate the country amid an ongoing communications blackout, according to an expert who studies internet outages.
Starlink is a US-based service owned by billionaire Elon Musk's SpaceX. It provides mobile broadband internet via a network of orbiting satellites.
Doug Madori, director of internet analysis at network intelligence platform Kentik, raised the possibility that the government is conducting “some kind of electronic warfare to try to disrupt these Starlink signals“.
“When you use a satellite terminal, you're kind of blasting the signal,“ he said. That signal can then be tracked and blocked, “depending on how much effort the government wants to spend on it“, Madori told CNN.
Some Starlink users in Iran are experiencing high levels of “packet loss“, indicating that their signal may be “jamming”, Madori said.
Although the Iranian regime opposes Starlink use in the country, Madori said people have been able to smuggle terminals in.