TEHRAN, Iran, Nov.19
Trend:
The shutdown of internet in Iran has created problems for domestic online businesses, a representative of Iran's Cyber Business Union Reza Olfat told Trend.
"There are no precise statistics over the possible volume of losses, but businesses had to interrupt their activities because of the shutdown," he said.
Olfat did say that an estimate of 200,000 vendors in Iran work on social media, and their work was interrupted due to internet shutdown.
The businesses included both private websites and businesses on social media networks, said Olfat.
"Online sales have drastically reduced, the revenues have dropped. Small businesses suffered more losses than big ones," he said.
Olfat said that the damage could've been minimized if the businesses were notified in advance, and the national local network would've been launched as a substitute.
"Websites that don't do anything criminal, should be allowed to work, so that users can easily access them. But this wasn't done," he said.
"Currently, there are more than 50,000 trust signs issued to online websites in Iran. The government should be more sensitive to this, since these businesses pay taxes and should have internet access, no matter the circumstances," Olfat said.