Correspondents of “Chronicles of Turkmenistan” report that over the past weeks Internet users in Turkmenistan have again faced problems related to the access to the Internet and VPN applications, which can be used to circumvent blocked websites, social media and messengers.
Regular attempts undertaken by the authorities to block VPN servers and clamp down on specialists who install applications to circumvent censorship have led to a considerable increase in the fees for such services.
A year ago the fee for the installation of a VPN application was 80 manats whereas specialists currently charge up to $50 a month. Employees of the state-run and the only Internet provider “Altyn Asyr” unofficially provide these services.
Radio “Azatlyk” reported that on 15 July websites of Russian news agencies RIA “Novosti”, TASS, RBK, InoSMI and others were also inaccessible together with many other websites and VPN servers. According to the news outlet, the access to them was restored the next day.
Later, on 16 July, TASS and RIA “Novosti” reported that their websites as well as the websites of Lenta.ru and RBK were accessible in Turkmenistan without any restrictions.
They did not mention whether VPN applications were blocked.
On 14 July the media outlet Turkmen news reported on the blocking of Cloudflare services, thanks to which, according to the news outlet, “70% of the Turkmen Internet has survived”.
This data is confirmed by Cloudflare Radar, according which the traffic from Turkmenistan over the past week dropped to almost zero despite the fact that on Sunday evening, 17 July, it gradually restored.
Internet disruptions have become more frequent in Turkmenistan this year.In April the Internet users could not go online for almost two days.
According to correspondents of “Chronicles of Turkmenistan”, the Turkmen authorities tried to introduce the list of websites the access to which is permitted.In other words, there was the list of blocked websites and all websites and online services which were not included on the list were blocked at the time.
It cannot always be definitely asserted whether the disrupted Internet access is caused by deliberate blocking by the special services, incompetent staff, outdated network infrastructure, wrongly assembled equipment of the Internet provider or a combination of all or some of the above factors.
For instance, in April 2022, a reader of “Chronicles of Turkmenistan” assumed that disrupted Internet connection was caused by a failure of “Turkmentelecom” DNS server following the testing of new functions or new software for detailed analysis of the Internet traffic (DPI) which is used to identify and block VPN connections.The post Turkmenistan again experiences disruptions in the Internet and VPN access first appeared on Chronicles of Turkmenistan.