Indian telecom Reliance is sabotaging access to Telegram for millions of users OUTSIDE India (including the UAE) via a rogue method called BGP hijacking.

The sabotage seems intentional, as Reliance has ignored multiple reports.

This may be part of a competitive war, as Reliance is partially owned by Meta — the company behind WhatsApp.

Network operators are advised to reject unauthorized BGP announcements from Reliance (AS18101) to prevent route hijacks and ensure stable Internet access for their users.

Such abuse of global Internet routing is suspicous. I wouldn’t be surprised if Reliance/WhatsApp were also behind the recent lobbying effort to ban Telegram in India.

UPDATE: 4 hours after this post, Reliance had to stop the malicious routing. Thanks for the public support, everyone!