Azerbaijan, Baku, Sep.29 / Trend F.Karimov/
Removing filtering of some news websites in Iran has nothing to do with the recent visit of president Hassan Rouhani to New York, the Mehr News Agency quoted an unnamed official as saying.
The decision had been taken by a specialized working group on July 10, the report added.
The working group reviews a number of websites, which contain offensive content, in each of its sessions. The working group may decide to remove filtering of some of the websites, the official said.
In July, vice chancellor of Iran's Supreme Council of Information and Communications Technology (SCICT), Saeed Salarian said that Iran will restart developing filtering software for organizations, which was suspended due to lack of assets.
According to the report, the filtering software which will be used at organizations for building necessary access levels to workers inside the network, and also provide possibility to monitor the employees' online behavior.
Salarian added that another filtering software, oriented for family use, will also be upgraded. He noted that the first version of this software is already being used by users at their homes, for proper online filtering for children's safety.
The both products will be developed by private sector under support of the SCICT.
Iran has blocked access to the many websites including You Tube, Facebook as well political Farsi-language sites, especially by local bloggers critical of the Islamic system and VOA and BBC.
Porn sites also are totally restricted in Iran and even ordinary information sites on books or films are sometimes blocked if their titles contain terms such as sex or even kiss.
Most users have found ways to evade the state censors and get access to all sites via proxy tunnels and channels.
The number of internet users in the year which ended in March 2012 reached 32.7 million in Iran. The number of GPRS users amounts to 27.5 million, accounting for 36 percent of total internet users in Iran as of current.
Some 867,000 people are using high-speed internet, and about 6 million people are using internet via optical fiber network.
Since 2005, Iran has been developing the "national internet" to improve control over its content as well as speed.
The project, which is separate from the World Wide Web, was scheduled to be completed by 2013. This network will be separated from the rest of the internet specifically for domestic use.