TEHRAN, Iran — Iran’s semi-official Mehr news agency reported Thursday that authorities have ordered network providers to stop hosting the popular social-messaging app Telegram.
The report comes after a top Iranian lawmaker said last month the government would block Telegram for reasons of national security. Since then, many government affiliated users of the app have migrated to local alternatives.
Telegram in the past said it rented nodes for its content delivery network, which allowed servers to provide fast content delivery in many regional countries, including Iran. Thursday’s report said the order will lead to slowness and delays.
The app, with some 40 million users in Iran, was temporarily shut down during protests in early January. However, some 10 percent of users reached it through proxies and VPN services.
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