5 November 2020
November 5, 2020
Beltelecom, the national telecommunications company in Belarus, fully owned by the Government of Belarus and operated by the Ministry of Telecommunications, controls the traffic of Telegram, generating latency for the messenger platform in Belarus.
During the past weeks Qurium Media Foundation and Human Constanta, a human rights NGO in Belarus, have been monitoring an increase of latency against the Telegram network from Belarus. During protests, only certain IP addresses inside of Telegram network had high latency. This behavior is likely the result of a traffic control policy implemented by the operator.
“The traffic policy is individually applied to each of the IPs in the Telegram network so addresses with less traffic experience less latency”, states Qurium’s forensics report. In order to confirm where the traffic shaping is taking place, Qurium measured the latency from different providers during last Sunday’s protests. The measurements showed latency from Beltelecom, while latency was not present in traffic from other providers in the country.
Qurium forensics report: Telegram latency and Belarus
Contacts:
Digital forensics: Tord Lundström, Qurium Media Foundation t@virtualroad.org
Media: Clara Zid, Qurium Media Foundation info@virtualroad.org