Iran is losing an estimated $1.56 million an hour due to the state-imposed internet blackout, draining its struggling economy and disrupting the lives of more than 90 million people, an internet privacy analyst said.
The prolonged disruptions came amid growing protests in January, with losses continuing even after partial connectivity was restored, he said.
“Iran has already drained $215 million from its economy by 2025 by disrupting internet access,” the internet privacy and security analyst added.
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Iran’s internet outage began on January 8 and is reportedly costing $1.56 million per hour, amid protests. (Image Maria/Middle East/AFP via Getty Images)
Migliano said his estimates were calculated using the NetBlocks COST toolan economic model that measures the immediate impact on a country’s gross domestic product when the digital economy is forced offline.
The model assesses direct losses to productivity, online transactions and remote working, based on data from the World Bank, the International Telecommunications Union, Eurostat and the US Census Bureau.
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According to the organization NetBlocks, internet access in Iran has been completely cut off since January 9, 2026, following protests that swept the country. (Samuel Boivin/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
Iranian authorities abruptly cut off communications on the night of January 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 text messages, the population is largely denied free access to the Internet due to heavy state filtering.
“The recent 579% increase in demand for VPNs reflects a battle 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 like VPNs.”
“We can see spikes showing that once connectivity returned, users immediately sought out VPNs to reach sites and services outside the state-controlled network, including global platforms like WhatsApp and Telegram that otherwise remain inaccessible,” he added.
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“The recent 579% increase in demand for VPNs reflects a battle for digital survival,” Migliano said. (UGC via AP)
“Sustained demand – averaging 427% above normal levels – indicates that Iranians are stockpiling circumvention tools in anticipation of further power outages,” Migliano said.
“The usual strategy is to download as many free tools as possible and cycle between them. It becomes a game of cat and mouse, as the government blocks individual VPN servers and providers rotate IP addresses to stay ahead of censorship,” he added.
Iran’s Information and Communications Technology Minister Sattar Hashemi acknowledged the economic toll caused by the blackout tactics.
He said recent outages are causing him roughly “5 trillion rials” a day in losses to the digital economy and nearly 50 trillion rials to the broader economy. Iran International.
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“Iran’s three-week internet outage may have been lifted, but connectivity remains severely disrupted,” Migliano claimed.
“Access is still heavily filtered. It is limited to a government-approved ‘whitelist’ of sites and apps and the connection itself remains highly unstable throughout the day,” he added.
