Iran's Minister of Communication and Information Technology Reza Taqipour said reports that the country is planning to shut down the internet and replace it with a national intranet network were untrue, Fars News Agency reports.

"The news on unplugging the internet by the month of Shahrivar (which starts on August 22) and launching a national intranet was released on the sidelines of a forum in the final days of the previous Iranian year and were by no means true," Taqipour said on Wednesday, April 18.

Iran, however, does have plans to establish a "national information network" that would function like a sort of intranet for the Islamic Republic, he said, and explained that the revelations about the national intranet network referred to an extensive multi-layer network with a wide bandwidth which has already been launched across the country.

"The main function of this network is that the information produced in Iran - which is on the increase each day - and transferred (to a recipient) inside the country will not need to go through international bandwidth to avoid unnecessary costs," Taqipour added.

Some online reports said last week that Iran plans to cut access to the internet and replace web sites such as Google and Facebook with Iranian alternatives, but the Iranian government rejected the reports as “Western propaganda”.