Telegram Users in Kenya are Experiencing Puzzling Outages

Telegram is suffering outages. Users on the messenger app have been faced with a number of issues on the mobile app, PC and web. For more than 24 hours, Telegram users have been frustrated by delays from the platform

For instance, trying to log in on the app via a browser could be met by the message “web.telegram.org took too long to respond”. What is even more puzzling is the fact that the inaccessibility is not consistent. If one has two telegram accounts, you can find that one logs in smoothly while the other returns an error message.

Another issue currently facing Telegram users is the delay in updating channels. App users are getting Telegram notifications on PC and Mobile as usual. However, when one opens the app, they may discover that the Channel that has just sent a notification is not updated. The delay in updating channels has no consistent timing. It currently varies from a few minutes to a few hours. The same delay applies in sending messages. User messages on the chat platform can remain unsent for much longer than usual. The search bar on the platform may display the message “reconnecting” prompting a user to think they have network issues.

The worst-case scenario witnessed so far is the app login itself out. If you access your Telegram account via a browser you might find yourself logged out. This takes place abruptly and without notice.

Telegram Issue Limited to Kenya

On its official channels, the platform has not acknowledged its facing issues. This has left netizens guessing with some rechecking with their ISPs to find out if the platform has been blocked. Currently, the issue appears to be facing Kenyan users exclusively with reports emerging from the 8^th of November. The platform Downdetector by Ookla has not reported any major outage on the platform. It is worth noting that Downdetector “only reports an incident when the number of problem reports is significantly higher than the typical volume for that time of day.”

The lack of global reports by such platforms or individual users indicates this is uniquely a Kenyan problem. In addition, using VPN to change location immediately eliminates the problem.

Airtel Kenya responded to a query from a user by saying: “We are working to resolve the telegram issue as soon as possible and we will inform you once a permanent fix has been done”

However, the issue is not limited to those on Airtel Kenya Network alone. People relying on Safaricom have also reported the same problem. From a personal experience, switching from Safaricom Home Fibre to Zuku seemed to resolve the problem. The main cause of the issue remains unknown.