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He maintained that the increase in the Internet traffic exchange is thanks to services rendered to users on the National Information Network in the format of video and online transport services.

Fattahi also announced the inauguration of a project to increase the country’s IP network to a capacity of 18.5Tb/s in the near future.

In the first few years of the 21st century, Iran experienced a great surge in Internet usage. As world Internet usage grew, Internet censorship in Iran has increased and many world popular websites have been blocked in Iran.  As of 2018, lran has an estimate Internet penetration rate of between 64% to 69% out of a population of about 82 million.

As of 2012, an average of 27% of Internet sites was blocked at a given time and as of 2013 almost 50% of the top 500 visited websites worldwide were blocked, including YouTube,  Facebook,  Twitter, and Blogger.  The Iranian government and Islamic Revolutionary Guard Sepah are interested to block social media such as Netflix,  YouTube,  Facebook,  Hulu,  Telegram,  Snapchat,  Medium, etc.  Iranians also stay connected on social media despite the government restrictions. The blocked sites have a wide range of topics including health, science, sports, news, pornography and shopping.

The Internet in lran is managed by the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Iran and the Supreme Council of Cyberspace of lran. The head of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Iran is elected by the Supreme Leader of Iran. The Supreme Leader of lran, Ayatollah Khamenei believes that the Internet is invented by the enemies of Iran to use it against the Iranian people. The sixth president of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Ayatollah Khamenei agreed to internet censorship in lran.