Iran upgrades national intranet

The Iranian government has begun the latest phase of its National Information Network (NIN) project, which is creating a closed national internet service which hosts only approved Islamic content. The Financial Tribune says under the latest phase, dubbed Talash 3, capacity will reach 10Tbps (10,000Gbps), up from 1Tbps in 2013 and 4Tbps in April 2016. ‘The project will ultimately help advance the development of start-ups and knowledge-based businesses,’ telecoms minister Mahmoud Vaezi is quoted as saying. The NIN service – which is also known as Internet-e Paak (Pure Internet) – was opened in August 2016 and is meant to provide a faster and more reliable connection for Iranian users, and to complement the World Wide Web rather than replace it. Two previous phases of work – Noor 1 and Noor 2 – were carried out to deploy a nationwide fibre-optic backbone network.