Reliance Jio has denied allegations made by Telegram founder Pavel Durov that the telecom operator was using a technique known as Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) hijacking to disrupt access to the messaging platform for users outside India.
The denial came a day after Durov levelled the accusation on social media platform X, amid Telegram’s escalating dispute with Indian authorities over the government’s temporary restriction on the platform ahead of the NEET-UG 2026 re-examination.
What Pavel Durov accused Reliance of
In his post, Durov alleged that Reliance was sabotaging access to Telegram for millions of users outside India, including in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), through what he described as a rogue technique called BGP hijacking.
He further claimed that the issue appeared intentional because Meta owns roughly a 10 per cent stake in Reliance Jio Platforms, suggesting the telecom operator may have acted to give WhatsApp an advantage while Telegram remained restricted.
Durov urged network operators to reject unauthorised route announcements that he alleged were originating from Reliance.
Reliance Jio later issued a public rebuttal stating that it had “not been involved in any such incident” and that it continues to operate its network in accordance with global internet-routing best practices.
What is BGP and why does the internet need it?
Most people think of the internet as a single giant network. In reality, it consists of tens of thousands of smaller networks operated by telecom companies, cloud providers, governments, universities and technology firms.
Whenever someone opens Telegram, YouTube or Gmail, their request typically travels through several of these networks before reaching its destination. The system that helps these networks find one another is called the Border Gateway Protocol (BGP).
Think of the internet as a giant courier network. Every telecom operator, cloud provider and internet company manages its own
delivery network. Telegram’s servers may be connected to one network, while your internet connection may come from another.
Suppose you want to send a parcel from Delhi to a small town in Kerala. The courier handling the parcel may not serve that destination directly. Instead, it passes the parcel to another courier company, which may pass it on again until it reaches the final address.
For that system to work, each courier company must know which company can deliver to which locations. BGP performs a similar role on the internet. It allows networks to continuously exchange information about which internet addresses they can reach and how traffic should be forwarded.
In effect, BGP functions as a global directory that helps internet traffic find its destination across thousands of interconnected networks.
Without BGP, networks would not know where to send data once it left their own systems, making global internet connectivity virtually impossible.
Why is BGP vulnerable to hijacking?
The key issue is that traditional BGP does not have a built-in mechanism to automatically verify every route announcement it receives.
If one network announces that it can deliver traffic to a particular destination, other networks may accept that claim and begin forwarding traffic accordingly.
In simple terms, BGP often operates on trust first and verification later.
This means that if a network accidentally publishes incorrect routing information, or deliberately announces routes that do not belong to it, traffic can be redirected through the wrong path. This is commonly known as a BGP hijack.
Researchers and internet-governance organisations have warned about this weakness for years. According to the Internet Society-backed MANRS initiative, routing incidents such as route leaks and route hijacks continue to occur globally despite ongoing efforts to improve security.
Why was BGP designed this way?
BGP was developed in the late 1980s when the internet was far smaller and less complex than it is today.
At the time, the number of connected networks was limited and participants generally knew and trusted one another. As a result, the primary goal was to ensure different networks could communicate efficiently.
Security threats such as state-backed cyber operations, large-scale internet fraud, cryptocurrency theft and global social media platforms either did not exist or were not major concerns.
Because of that, BGP was built around a trust-based model, with networks largely expected to provide accurate routing information.
That design helped the internet grow rapidly but also created vulnerabilities that are still being addressed decades later.
Is this a one-off incident?
No. Routing incidents involving BGP have occurred for years across the global internet. While many result from accidental configuration errors rather than deliberate attacks, they can still disrupt services and redirect traffic through unintended networks.
India has witnessed several such incidents.
In 2015, incorrect route announcements involving Bharti Airtel briefly affected traffic destined for Google services. In 2020, researchers at Oracle Internet Intelligence reported route leaks involving Vodafone Idea.
These incidents highlight a broader reality: because internet routing relies on thousands of independently operated networks exchanging information, mistakes can sometimes spread far beyond the network where they originated.
