SMS Revolution

Shahram Rafizadeh, Rooz Online:

Blocking SMS (Short Message Service) is a new communications instrument that is taken very seriously by the new Iranian government and those in the Ministry of Communications.

In order to confront and control SMS messaging and the relevant communications technology, president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his hard-line government ministers have seriously decided to take the necessary measures to limit the use of a technology that at critical junctures can be used by the government's critics and opposition groups. Iranian authorities believe that they have successfully completed their efforts to block internet access and have cracked down on web bloggers, so now they are turning their attention to SMS messaging. READ MORE

Supporters of restricting SMS make jokes and comments to mock the new president and other senior government officials. Officials in Iran's Telecommunication sector, on the other hand, while making huge sums of money from SMS services warn that of the negative consequences of such restrictions on the public and say the impact of this on the economy of the country's telecommunication sector are still not known.

In his televised election campaigns Ahmadinejad depicted SMS as a tool used to destroy his image. Records of internet filtering and serious crackdown on the press during the presidential election campaign proved that Ahmadinejad was right on his criticism about SMS message. So SMS was certainly an important election tool.

SMS was used earlier too to persuade people to boycott the last parliamentary (Majlis) elections. In those days, no government official seriously talked about controlling this media. But SMS fever during the recent presidential election forced Ahmadinejad to file a complaint with the Judiciary. A close ally of Ahmadinejad had said that SMS telephone and satellite messages are aimed at destroying his image.

In reaction to Ahmadinejad and his camp's allegations over the “misuse” of SMS, Iran's Minister of Communications and Technology denied such accusations but acknowledged that his ministry can not control the flow of messages in this media.

There are various ways to size the SMS users. By one account, the government has spent 34 million Rials to activate the network for some 700,000 subscribers. It is estimated that at the end of the current Iranian year, this amount will reach 170 million Rials with 8, 500,000 subscribers.

Legal experts believe by controlling SMS, officials are really entering people's private spheres. Mohammad Ali Dadkhah, a lawyer in Tehran believes SMS messaging is a private conversation between two people and no judicial authority is allowed to control it. He believes that it is in fact illegal and unconstitutional.