New Delhi/Dubai. Telegram founder and CEO Pavel Durov has made very serious and sensational allegations against Indian telecommunications company Reliance. Durov has claimed that Reliance is allegedly affecting the access to Telegram of millions of users outside India’s borders, especially in many other countries including the United Arab Emirates (UAE), through BGP hijacking. Terming the act as “intentional sabotage”, Durov said that despite repeated complaints and reports, Reliance has consistently ignored this serious technical problem.

The angle of competitive battle was also exposed

In his explosive statement, Pavel Durov also alleged that this whole matter could also be deeply to a competitive business battle. Pointing out this, he said that Meta/Facebook has a minority stake in Reliance’s digital platform ‘Jio Platforms’. However, official records show that Facebook had bought a 9.99 percent stake in Jio Platforms in the year 2020, while Reliance Industries Limited remains the controlling owner.

Appeal to network operators to reject unauthorized BGP announcements

Durov made a direct appeal to network operators around the world to immediately reject all unauthorized BGP announcements coming from Reliance’s AS18101, so that this route hijacking can be stopped and global Internet access can be maintained stable and secure. Going by the technical records, AS18101 appears to be associated with Reliance Communications Limited, while Reliance Jio Infocomm has a completely different ASN number AS55836. In such a situation, a thorough and impartial investigation into the technical aspect of this matter has become extremely important and necessary.