Despite widespread censorship, a report by the Iran’s state-run news agency IRNA says the internet penetration rate has surpassed 122 percent in the country.

The agency said on Thursday that according to the latest data, the penetration rate of fixed and mobile broadband has exceeded 122 percent in total, mentioning the Covid-19 pandemic as one of the reasons for the increase.

That use of fixed broadband internet is about 13 percent of total as most of the growth took place in the mobile internet.

The number of Iranian mobile subscriptions has reached nearly 136 million, meaning that the penetration rate of mobile phones is more than 161 percent.

Iran has widely blocked websites and social media apps in the past two decades to restrict citizens’ access to information, but people use VPNs and other tools to circumvent the censorship.

According to social media management platform Hootsuite, the number of Global Internet users has already reached almost 5 billion as of 2021.

Datareportal’s statistics indicate that internet penetration in Iran stood at 70 percent in January 2020, while there were 58.42 million internet users. However, data by the World Bank said the use of the Internet by individuals was 84 percent in 2020.

Iranians were outraged last week when a group of 18 hardliners in a parliament committee claimed that they had ratified a bill to further restrict internet and social media access.