Iran throttles the speed of the Internet to frustrate users and limit communication. Mass-scale throttling has been observed following the 2009 Iranian presidential election, the weeks leading to 2013 election, and during times of international political upheaval. In October 2006, the government ordered all ISPs to limit their download speeds to 128 &lt;a href="Kilobit%20per%20second"&gt;kbit/s&lt;/a&gt; for residential clients and Internet cafes. No reason was publicly announced. The purpose, as widely believed according to Reuters, was to constrain the consumption of Western mass media. As of 2010, ISPs in Tehran may offer a higher speed of at least two &lt;a href="Mbit/s"&gt;Mbit/s&lt;/a&gt; for only businesses while the residential speed limit remained. Since then, speed restrictions have been relaxed.