Problems With Internet And Mobile Communications In Belarus Continue

This concerns different providers.

Belarusians continue to complain about problems with the Internet — both mobile and home, from different providers — as well as with VPN services, writes devby.io.

One of the readers of devby.io wrote on January 29 at 2:00 a.m.: “Mobile Internet on A1 is down. It doesn’t even load government portals like pravo.by.” To confirm his words, he attached screenshots: he tried to open Instagram, went to Telegram, YouTube, and even pravo.by — nothing worked.

The interlocutor noted that interruptions in the Internet for him personally “create a lot of problems,” since “almost everything is tied to it.”

— Specifically, last night I couldn’t watch a TV series before going to bed. But luckily there is a home network.

He remembered that the same thing happened to him three days ago — at about 17.30, when he was driving through the Zavodski district of Minsk: “mobile Internet was down for 20 minutes.”

The reader specifies that he checked the provider's website — “there is no news about any work being done on this section.”

There are complaints from other users as well:

— Only today the Internet just went down (or was cut off), but 10 minutes after calling Beltelecom it was restored.

And before that, on Sunday, there was no Internet from 0.30 am until about 4 pm (while the mobile worked fine). Previously, there was no connection periodically on weekends at night and early Sunday morning — and this has been the case for the past two months.

The interlocutor is indignant that this “really interferes” with both his work and leisure, but does not specify how. He discussed the problem with his neighbors, they have an A1 provider, and they have no such problems.

Another reader reported that “yesterday some emojis didn't work in Discord, and it was difficult to log into Chinese gacha games — every other time a message appeared: “Server allocation error. Check your network connection, restart the game and try again.”

The interlocutor has home Internet from A1.

Devby.io journalists checked the websites of providers: A1 reports on maintenance work, due to which fixed-line and VOKA services may not work across the country on January 28, and on January 29 — on Mazurau Street. MTS indicated that on January 28 “scheduled maintenance will be carried out on the network of a higher-level partner. During the period of maintenance, the quality of the Internet service provided may deteriorate.”

Beltelecom posted a schedule of work in the regions and Minsk — due to them, for example, there may have been interruptions in home Internet on Independence Avenue and Khmelnitsky Street.

Another reader tells about problems with mobile Internet from A1 the previous morning. She brought her child to the clinic — and for a long time could not call a taxi home: there was no connection.

— A couple of mothers in line outside the doctor's office complained that due to the lack of Internet on their phones, they could not turn on cartoons for their children — so I was clearly not the only one with the problem.

Later, the same reader could hardly connect to an online meeting with colleagues, the connection was very poor. A request to the service provider's chat bot did not help: the woman was sent instructions on how to set up automatic settings on her phone.

There are also complaints about the work of VPN services. For example, that “Proton VPN has not been working since Saturday — it periodically connects to rare servers, but there is no Internet.”

The reader tried both ByFly and A1 — and nothing. “It does not affect work,” he clarifies.

Another reader says he found a life hack: he changes servers until he gets to Romania — “Proton VPN connects well to it.” However, this life hack does not work for the previous speaker:

— Yes, such servers are found from time to time, but usually when connecting to them, either the Internet disappears altogether, or only Telegram remains working. And yesterday I was able to connect to an Austrian server — and there was Internet, but an hour later the connection stopped working.

Users have been reporting VPN service failures since January 25. Many were unable to connect to Proton, NordVPN, TunnelBear and other VPN services that day. Some services, such as Psiphon, remained available. Among the sites that had problems connecting to were Twitch, Steam and Reddit.

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