Iran ‘jails’ Elon Musk’s Starlink satellite internet

The international community has witnessed an unprecedented event in the arena of world technology and geopolitics. Iran has become the first country to virtually disable the Starlink satellite internet owned by American billionaire Elon Musk. Security and technology analysts are seeing this step of disrupting satellite connections using military-grade jammers as unprecedented and very significant.

According to the Iran Wire report, although there are several thousand Starlink receiver units active inside Iran, their satellite connections are currently being severely disrupted. Initially, about 30 percent of Starlink’s uplink and downlink traffic was affected, but within a few hours, this disruption increased to more than 80 percent. As a result, internet connections have become virtually unusable in many areas.

According to the Times of Israel report, the number of Starlink receivers in Iran has increased significantly compared to any previous time. However, the Iranian government has never approved the use of Starlink. As a result, this satellite internet service has been considered illegal in the country. Tehran has long been concerned about the use of Starlink in the context of anti-government protests and information flow control.

Technically, Starlink receivers rely on GPS signals to establish connections with satellites. According to experts, disrupting this GPS signal was Iran's main strategy. If the GPS signal is weakened or distorted by military jammers, it becomes almost impossible to maintain a receiver's connection with the satellite.

According to the Times of Israel, Iran has been continuously disrupting GPS signals since the 12-day conflict with Israel in June last year. As a result, the impact of the Starlink internet shutdown has taken different forms depending on the area - while partial connectivity has been maintained in some places, almost complete blackouts have been seen in others.

According to analysts, this incident is not just technical, but a strong indication of future 'digital warfare'. This conflict between state power and private satellite internet could create new questions and challenges regarding communication security and information freedom around the world in the coming days.