A look at how Iranians are using satellite file-casting app Toosheh to bypass state internet blackouts as the country pushes its national intranet
and they're using them to circumvent the web during internet blackouts. @mehrnadeem3 reports for @restofworld https://restofworld.org/... https://twitter.com/... Mehr Nadeem / @mehrnadeem3 : Last November, amid anti-regime protests, the Iranian government pulled the plug on the internet - cutting off external communication for over 80 million Iranians and setting off the longest internet shutdown the country has ever seen. (1/6) @restofworld https://restofworld.org/... Anup Kaphle / @anupkaphle : How do you circumvent an internet shutdown? Iranians are using the satellite dishes on their roofs. https://restofworld.org/... — by @mehrnadeem3 @restofworld : Iranians are getting internet blackout survival tools beamed into their homes via satellite By @mehrnadeem3 https://restofworld.org/... Meher / @_meher : This story (by @mehrnadeem3) kind of blew my mind. Iranians are using satellite dishes, like TV satellite dishes, to beam information into the country. During the countrywide internet shutdown last year, it was a lifeline for outside information https://restofworld.org/...
Context & Ripple Effects
Toosheh is not new to crisis: back in 2016 it was pitched as a workaround for Iran's slow, censored internet, letting households pull videos down over the satellite dishes already on their roofs. What changed by late 2020 is the trigger — the government's cutoff of external communication during anti-regime protests, described as the country's longest shutdown, turned a bandwidth workaround into a blackout lifeline.
The story also sits at the start of an arc the later coverage completes: the same population that used dishes for one-way file-casting later reached for smuggled Starlink receivers and customized software to evade a near-total blackout, while SpaceX waived Starlink subscription fees amid the disruption. The state's counter-move throughout is a national intranet — domestic connectivity designed to function precisely when the outside internet does not.
First-order effects
- Households with ordinary TV satellite dishes can keep receiving packaged content during a shutdown without any internet connection, so the blackout does not fully cut them off from information.
Second-order effects
- A one-way broadcast channel pushes users toward two-way tools when they need to communicate back out — the pattern the later coverage shows, with VPNs, decentralized messaging apps, and Starlink filling what file-casting alone cannot do.
Third-order effects
- If the intranet strategy holds, censorship becomes a contest between terrestrial control and orbiting or broadcasting infrastructure, drawing foreign providers like SpaceX directly into Iranian access politics rather than leaving the fight to domestic tools.
The trend: State-built national intranets are colliding with a bypass stack that keeps migrating upward from household satellite dishes to low-earth-orbit internet, making shutdowns harder to enforce at each step.