I discovered this morning that I could not
open timigate.com on my phone using Google Chrome. I tried a couple of other
sites and discovered that while those running on WordPress were reachable, the
ones on blogger were unreachable. This got me confused. First all, how do you
explain that sites hosted on a Google product(Blogger) can not be reached using
another Google product(Chrome)? Secondly, I could access these sites some hours
ago. To unravel this mystery, I went digging.
I cleared
my browser history, clear the cache, uninstalled and re-installed Google
Chrome, unfortunately the sites remained inaccessible. I tried using different
browser and the sites opened successfully.
At this
point, I took my mind back to two days ago when I got a complaint from a frequent
blog reader about not being able to access this site on Google Chrome even
though she could on Opera mini. The fact that she uses Glo and I have recently
switched my data sim from MTN to Glo, after which I began noticing this issue
couldn’t be a mere coincidence. Could it be that Nigeria’s largest indigenous
telecommunications service provider has put in place a restriction on users who
use Google Chrome to access sites hosted on blogger? I went a step further.
I switched
my data sim back to MTN, launched Google Chrome, typed in timigate.com and viola, it opened. I tried a couple of other blogs hosted on blogger and they
all opened. Not convinced it’s a Glo issue, I switched back to Glo and the
sites became inaccessible again while sites like bbc.com and other non-blogger
sites were accessible. Back to MTN again and I could open the
sites.
My
conclusion: if you are using Glo for browsing, chances are you are not able to
access sites hosted on Blogger- sites like this one. If you are presently
experiencing this issue, it has nothing to do with Chrome; it’s a Glo issue.
Simple switch to MTN or other providers that are good in your area. If you
cannot switch, simply download Opera mini or any other browser and use until
the issue is fixed by Glo, that’s if they even know about it.