Internet outage entered the 10th day; The Ministry of Tourism is also silent!

Thursday, January 18, was the beginning of the most unprecedented communication blackout in Iran. This time, the international Internet was not the only service that was out of reach of users, and along with it, SMS, internal messengers, international phone calls and dozens of other services stopped working. The absolute blackout of communication has grounded many businesses in the tourism sector. A significant amount of economic activities in the field of tourism takes place on the Internet, and in the blackout of the Internet, the activists in this field faced extensive problems. On the other hand, the shutdown of social networks has stopped the promotional activities of companies and caused their programs to be canceled one after another.

The fourth quarter of the year, especially January and Bahman, is considered the most important time to advertise and plan tourism tours for Nowruz; The opportunity that has now become uncertain due to the internet shutdown, and many tourism agencies have stopped their campaigns and plans for Nowruz trips due to the current conditions.

Although more than 10 days have passed since the communication blackout in Iran, some services have returned to the activity circuit. International calls from Iran was the first service that became available; Although this possibility is connected one-way and it is still not possible to call inside the country from abroad.

Domestic messengers, which were supposed to solve the country’s need for messengers on the national internet platform, were also unavailable this time at the same time as the internet was cut off, and from the beginning of this week, the services of some of these services were gradually made available again. Based on this, personal and group chat functionality has been reactivated on Rubika, iGap, Yes and Sorushplus since Friday, January 26.

On the morning of Saturday, January 27th, the international internet showed vital signs for a few minutes at the level of 2% of the country’s connection; But this pulse of connection was also temporary and the situation quickly returned to absolute blackout.

In such circumstances, the government has completely absolved itself of responsibility for the state of the Internet and businesses. These days, instead of responding to the situation of tourism businesses, the Ministry of Tourism is preparing to hold its annual tourism exhibition. “Salehi Amiri”, the Minister of Tourism and his deputy in the field of tourism, have not reacted to the state of tourism businesses during the internet outage in even one sentence. While the conversation with tourism activists shows the dire situation of this industry these days. The blackout of the internet has marked the dark days for the tourism industry; But it seems that the situation in Azadi Citadel is completely normal for the team of the Ministry of Heritage and Tourism.