The Iran Government has announced its plans to establish a
National Intranet within five months. As a result
millions of Internet users in Iran will be permanently denied access to the World Wide Web (WWW) and cut off from popular social networking sites, email services & so on. The government is set to roll out the first phase of the project in May, following which Google, Hotmail and Yahoo services will be blocked and replaced with government Intranet services like
Iran Mail and
Iran Search Engine. At this stage, however, the World Wide Web, apart from the aforementioned sites, will still be accessible. Iran government has already started the
registration procedure to apply for procuring Iran Mail ID, which mandates
authentic information pertaining to a person's identity, including national ID, address and full name. Registration will be approved only after verifying it against the government data on the particular applicant. The second and final stage of the national Intranet will be launched in August, which will permanently deny Iranians access to the Internet. "All Internet Service Providers (ISP) should only present National Internet by August," Taghipour said in the statement. Iranian ISPs already face heavy penalties if they fail to comply with the government filter list. By establishing the Intranet, the government control is set to become stricter. Foreign sites can still be accessed over the Intranet provided they are mentioned in a
"white list" set up by the government. The government is also believed to be planning for better control on proxy servers which allow users to access banned sites. Accordint to statement of Reza Taghipour, the Iranian minister for Information and Communications Technology, announced the setting up of a national Intranet and the effective blockage of services like Google, Gmail, Google Plus, Yahoo and Hotmail, in line with Iran's plan for a
"clean Internet."