What Will You do When Internet Connectivity is Taken Away?

What is your plan if your internet connectivity goes down? 

The Iran government taking Iran’s internet services offline is of course a suppression technique. This is done to inhibit organizing, to stoke fear, and also to prevent communication with the outside world so that there’s no transparency and accountability.

Sometimes a specific app is shut down, and sometimes it’s all of the internet and cell service. And sometimes the government works with the internet service provider, sometimes the government works with app companies, and sometimes the government takes over utilities and shuts these things down.

And often they don’t even need to go to the company that owns an app or an ISP because they will use physical or digital devices to thwart and interrupt connectivity.

This happened before in Iran in 2019 when 100s were unalived by Iranian armed forces and we’ve also witnessed this type of shutdown happen in different countries globally. During the Egyptian Rebellion in 2011, it happens in the US as it did during protests for Black Lives Matter, and the list goes on.

Fortunately, we are seeing a lot of people on the ground in Iran get around and circumvent the app and internet shutdown. And we are able here and there to see some testimony and videos of what’s happening on the ground. 

So my question to you, as you witness this happening, is what will you do when internet connectivity is taken away?

What might be helpful is to know we have many different ways that we can connect. Wifi and cell service are the two main ways we connect to each other. There are also companies like Starlink that use satellites. 

But we also have radio waves, other short-range devices, landlines, mesh, and intranet devices just to name a few.

There are different options to stay connected. Of course, the main ones are wifi and cell service. Then we have satellites, like Starlink, Radios, landlines 

In some of my spare time, I help neighborhoods and organizations build intranet/mesh networks that don’t rely on ISPs for service. That means we build our own local infrastructure to connect to each other so that we are not reliant on these larger companies or the government.

We really have to strategize and plan ways to connect to each other that are not reliant on ways that could get shut down.

Folks that have been doing community organizing for a long time know all about this.

Keep spreading the word for folks on the ground that are sending out messages. Stay tuned to learn more about how we can build our own ways of communication.