The question posed to Telegram and Signal is deceptively simple: why allow citizens to communicate without exchanging their phone numbers? Sent in early July as a ministerial letter, the request brings a technical feature—usernames—back to the center of a debate that touches privacy, security and public law.
## A letter, a decision and a precedent
On July 1, WhatsApp’s optional rollout of usernames was suspended until the government said it was “satisfied” with the safeguards. The next day, similar notifications were sent to Telegram and Signal. Telegram has offered usernames since 2014; Signal introduced the option in 2024. The national messenger Arattai (Zoho) said it would simply remove the feature. None of these letters have been made public; citizens are learning of the state’s requests through media leaks.
These moves follow closely on the June 23 notification of the authorization rules under the Telecommunications Act, 2023, which modernises a legal framework inherited from colonial-era laws of 1885 and 1933. The reform replaces the concept of a “licence” with that of an “authorization” and defines telecommunications in broad technological terms—language that lawyers say is sufficiently vague to encompass messaging apps if the state so chooses.
## Why usernames are really a problem
A username is not an invisibility cloak: it is a human-readable identifier that points to an account, much like a domain name points to an IP address. On end-to-end encrypted platforms, message content remains opaque to the provider whether the recipient is identified by phone number or by pseudonym
