Telegram Outages over the World: When Updates Go Wrong

Telegram, a messenger that gained enormous popularity during the lockdowns, was down for a short time down in many countries of the world on January 17. Some connect this outage to the recent update that started to arrive uncontrollably.

If a user encountered this problem, they couldn’t just exchange text messages like they usually do. Instead, they got system messages that the chat or the channel is “updating” or “connecting”. This process happens often but usually, it takes seconds or even less to reconnect or download the messages that have been sent from other devices (Telegram, unlike some rivals, supports multi-login). Then, though, it took rather long, so users started complaining on Twitter.

Down Detector, the service that checks whether this or that resource is up or down has detected more than 4,000 local outages of Telegram that day. Most users experiencing this trouble were using Telegram via an app, though those using the web version also encountered this. On the very day of the incident, Telegram had to address its users via Twitter to assure them everything was okay.

Though it happened three days ago, there are still reports about Telegram working incorrectly. They come from various countries, including the U.S., India, Australia, and UAE. There was seemingly no logic in where the outage happened.

In case this repeats, we’d recommend Telegram users find an alternative channel to connect the most important people. If you have some precious or necessary content stored in the cloud and accessible via chats, you better download it and access it locally if you have to.

Did your Telegram work well on January 17? Or have you experienced this outage in any form? Do you report it to the support, complain publicly, or wait until it’s fixed? Tell us your Telegram story in the comments!