Around a year ago the Iranian minister of communication and telecommunication said that "home users" DO NOT NEED more than 128 KB Internet speed and all ISPs were banned to give home users faster connections! This speed is like a torture sometimes; I prefer to go to a café-net instead of wasting my time at home.
In addition, they imposed a very restricted nation-wide filtering on pornography, political, news, fashion and internet-filtering related sites.
Being back in Iran for a visit I wanted to read a biography of Iran’s previous princess, Farah Pahlavi. But searching her name in Google was filtered!! Out of curiosity I found many other banned words such as sex, intercourse, dick, pussy, fashion, underwear, Pamela Anderson, porn, etc.
Many popular sites are also filtered such as Youtube, Flickr, Orkut, etc.
I wonder what happens to researchers, e-commerce sites, distance learning technologies, video and audio streaming, etc.!!!!