Iran continues its push to keep foreign interests out of its internet by barring banks, insurance companies, and telecom providers from communicating with clients using foreign email providers like Gmail and Yahoo. They plan for the “Iranian Internet”, marked to be implemented this month, is intended to keep foreign internet providers from coming in and more importantly to keep their people from reaching out to the rest of the world.

“The telecommunications minister has ordered the use of domain names ending with .ir” belonging to Iran, Asr Ertebatat reported.

Iranians wanting to receive email communication from financial institutions must use Iranian-controlled email providers.

Protests in 2009 disputing the re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad were fueled in part by the internet and social media. The protests did not work, but were harder to quell with over 30 million (nearly half) of the population on the internet. The plans were begun at that point and announced in December, 2011.

In March, 2012, President Barack Obama reached out through video to the Iranian people in part to protest the “electronic curtain” that the Iranian government was imposing.