How Iran's internet blackout is affecting ordinary citizen

While Iran is still under a near-total internet blackout since 28 February, there are some who have access.

Although the authorities have rejected a so-called "tiered" access system, Iran has been granting selective access to certain groups.

Aside from some like journalists and pro-establishment users who had access since day one, access has recently been given to groups such as business owners, university lecturers, and more recently, doctors.

But what about those whose jobs rely on the internet and who are not part of the selected groups?

Iran’s communications minister says about 10 million people, out of a population of around 90 million, depend on "stable internet" and that the ongoing blackout threatens their jobs.

Some of them have had to pay large sums to buy connections, mainly routed through Starlink devices, which are themselves illegal in Iran.

The BBC has been talking to a few people whose lives depend on creating content on social media, and they have lost large portions of income because of the outage.

“My income has been reduced to one-third since the outage,” a freelance teacher told the BBC. He said he is using a domestic messaging app to hold his classes but that it "got disconnected 10 times today".

An official from the Iranian Chamber of Commerce estimated last week that internet outages cost $30-40m (£22-30m) daily in direct losses and $70-80m (£52-59m), including indirect impacts.