SpaceX's Starlink satellite internet service has slashed its fees to allow more people to avoid the Tehran government's strongest effort to prevent information spreading outside its borders, activists said on Wednesday.
Elon Musk's SpaceX has not officially announced the decision and did not respond to a request for comment, but activists told The Associated Press that Starlink has been available for free to anyone in Iran with a receiver since Tuesday.
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“Starlink has been vital,” said Mehdi Yahyanejad, an Iranian whose nonprofit Net Freedom Pioneers has helped smuggle the units into Iran, pointing to footage that emerged Sunday showing rows of bodies at a forensic medical center near Tehran.
“There were a few hundred bodies on the ground that came out because of Starlink,” he said in an interview from Los Angeles. “I think those videos from the center drastically changed everyone's understanding of what was happening because they saw it with their own eyes.”
Starlink is banned in Iran.
