t.me Domain Restored in DNS After Sudden Outage, But Full Recovery for Telegram Links May Take Up to 24 Hours
The short domain t.me has been successfully restored in the DNS after the .me registry removed the restrictive serverHold status that had rendered it unreachable for users worldwide.
According to the registry, DNS records for the domain have been reinstated, which means links in the format t.me should once again resolve correctly in web browsers. However, because DNS information is cached by internet service providers, corporate networks, and public resolvers, the change will not appear instantly for every user. Full propagation may take as long as 24 hours depending on individual cache lifetimes.
The incident began when the domain was abruptly removed from DNS at the registry level. A serverHold status appeared in the WHOIS record—an action that can only be taken by the registry operator itself rather than a regular registrar. As a direct result, short Telegram links stopped working globally, even though the messaging service itself continued to function without interruption.
In anticipation of a prolonged outage, Telegram proactively began replacing t.me links with the longer telegram.me format inside its own applications. While older t.me addresses still opened correctly when tapped within the messenger, any attempt to access them through an external browser led to a resolution failure.
The precise reason for the sudden application of the serverHold status has not been disclosed. It remains unclear whether the event was caused by a technical malfunction, a legal or regulatory request, or a deliberate manual decision by the registry operator.
With the domain now formally returned to active status, the only remaining step is for DNS servers across the internet to refresh their caches and begin serving the restored records to end users.
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