Report: European carriers voice opposition to Apple's Private Relay, as T-Mobile and others begin blocking the VPN-like service in the US and parts of Europe
Earlier today, a report indicated that some European carriers were blocking the Private Relay feature introduced by Apple with iOS 15.
The dispute matters because Private Relay was already not a universal service: Apple had listed country-level exclusions for the feature, making carrier access and regional availability central to how the service reaches users.
First-order effects
T-Mobile customers with content-filtering plans do not have access to Private Relay, even as the carrier rejects the characterization of a broad block.
Apple’s denial puts the reported U.S. and European restrictions in dispute, with Apple and T-Mobile offering incompatible explanations for users losing access.
Second-order effects
European carriers’ opposition and T-Mobile’s plan-specific exception make network policies and account settings a practical gatekeeper for an Apple privacy feature.
The conflicting carrier and Apple accounts shift attention from a single claimed outage toward whether access failures stem from device software, network handling, or filtering-plan rules.
Third-order effects
If country exclusions and carrier-level exceptions persist, privacy-relay services will be delivered as region- and network-contingent products rather than as uniform platform features.
The trend: Consumer privacy services are increasingly constrained by the local network and policy conditions that determine whether platform-level protections can operate.
FWIW, I have reached out to multiple T-Mobile contacts about this but can't get an answer. Ideally, this is a bug that gets resolved. Or it was a bad policy decision that they walk back. Either way, T-Mobile's silence is not helping the situation. https://9to5mac.com/...
I'm going to be a capitalism simp here for a bit, but if I was a network operator I'd also be concerned about not being able to gracefully degrade destinations causing network contention, ones that aren't latency-sensitive. Am I wrong? https://9to5mac.com/...
Why do iPhones even give carriers the ability to block this feature? And would the Obama-era net neutrality regulations have prohibited carriers from exercising this ability, despite Apple's misstep in making it possible? https://twitter.com/...
T-Mobile is reportedly blocking iCloud Private Relay for iPhones. If that's right, there's a potential FTC problem. Why? Because T-Mobile publicly promised to not block access to lawful applications. Breaching that promise could be a deceptive practice. https://9to5mac.com/... ht…
Some telecom operators hate Apple's privacy-minded Private Relay service. They block this. In Europe: https://9to5mac.com/... In US: https://9to5mac.com/... it's also unavailable in China and Belarus. https://twitter.com/... https://twitter.com/...
T-Mobile begins blocking iPhone users from enabling iCloud Private Relay in the US https://9to5mac.com/... // Super uncool. The real story is where the pressure is coming from to do this? It isn't organic (because business customers use VPN). Hmmm...
WTF @tmobile? So far I'm not seeing any issues with it on my iPhone 13 Pro Max. But the backlash will be swift, and hopefully Apple will iron it out. T-Mobile begins blocking iPhone users from enabling iCloud Private Relay in the US https://9to5mac.com/... via @ChanceHMiller
A followup report indicates T-Mobile's blocking may only be for customers who have content filtering affirmatively enabled on their service plan. If that's right, the problem isn't so much a net neutrality issue as a poorly designed and explained feature. https://tmo.report/...
Let's see what the EU (among others) feels about carriers blocking a feature that provides privacy for users. Might be an interesting flip side to Apple's issues over the App Store. https://twitter.com/...
y'know, the only reason to do this as an ISP is if you are directly spying on your customers and selling them out. (and yes, in the modern world cell phone companies are _just_ ISPs, that happen to have a built-in VoIP service. VoLTE, which they're migrating to, is just VoIP.) ht…
Hey @TMobile , I've been a customer for around a decade. I will cancel my service and move to another mobile carrier if you do not change course. https://twitter.com/...
This is timely! I was shopping for data plans for the kids (phone and watch for my helicopter parenting needs) just last week and this helps me eliminate two providers: https://twitter.com/...