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A whistleblower active in the IT industry has leaked documents revealing hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of telecommunications contracts between Iran and China.
London-based Iranian-British internet security expert and cyber espionage investigator Nariman Gharib released a list of contracts signed between the Islamic Republic's Ministry of Information and Communications Technology and Chinese companies.
The secret document – which has no date and cannot be verified independently by Iran International — contains a table of 10 contracts for various projects such as development of Iran's landline network, infrastructure for fourth and fifth generation of broadband cellular networks and three satellite projects as well as production of smartphones and developing messenger services.
The project for the supply and operation of a geosynchronous telecommunication satellite is announced to be at $100 to $450 million for a 42-month project while another satellite project is valued at $300 million for a three-year project.
The project for landline development is worth $220 million while the project for the modernization of Telecommunication Company of Iran, or TCI — the country's main mobile service provider — is $325 million followed by the modernization of MTN Irancell — another telecommunications company — at $250 million.
Each company will get 1,500 5G sites and 3,000 LTE networks, according to the contracts.
China's large-scale effort to control and censor the Internet has become a viable conceptual and technical model for authoritarian regimes, like Iran's Islamic Republic. The Islamic Republic of Iran follows China's lead in systematic oppression techniques. China has combined legislative actions and technological enforcement to regulate the Internet domestically, calling it “The Great Firewall” of China.