“Please see this link,” Iran’s minister of information and communications technology replied on Twitter after an internet freedom activist confronted him about net neutrality. Typically, Iranian government officials would ignore such affronts on social media, but Mohammad Javad Azari Jahromi engaged with a hyperlink to AT&T’s sponsored data program: His way of saying that they do it in America, too.
As Washington debated net neutrality regulation in December, Iran introduced a new internet pricing scheme. President Hassan Rouhani defended the move in an interview with state television on Nov. 28. He said, “We are trying to make cyberspace a more open environment. Instead of trying to sell more internet subscriptions, we are seeking to make the bandwidth wider and hopefully from Dec. 1, people will be offered lower internet usage prices.”