Telegram founder, Pavel Durov, confirmed today that the Telegram messaging service would indeed be getting a paid membership tier and that it would be rolling out to all users sometime this month.
“After giving it some thought, we realized that the only way to let our most demanding fans get more while keeping our existing features free is to make those raised limits a paid option,” Durov explained in a post on his official Telegram channel. “That’s why this month we will introduce Telegram Premium, a subscription plan that allows anyone to acquire additional features, speed and resources. It will also allow users to support Telegram and join the club that receives new features first.”
Durov confirmed that all existing features would remain free for all users and that only those wanting the more higher-end products, a minority of users, would be required to pay.
Interestingly, Durov also stated in his post that free users would gain some benefits from the Telegram Premium tier in addition to supporting the Telegram service as a whole. “Even users who don’t subscribe to Telegram Premium will be able to enjoy some of its benefits,” he explained. “They will be able to view extra-large documents, media and stickers sent by Premium users, or tap to add Premium reactions already pinned to a message to react in the same way.”
Neither an official price for Telegram Premium nor a complete list of confirmed features has been confirmed as of the time of this writing though, given that Premium’s launch is due this month, Telegram enthusiasts shouldn’t have to wait too long for details.
Telegram is an incredibly popular messaging service that now boasts well over 500 million users. The service has been rather aggressively adding features over the past few years and now supports livestreaming via OBS Studio, enhanced privacy settings, video conferencing, and voice calls with support for literally millions of listeners. Users can also use Telegram to send files up to 2GB in size.
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