A number of cellular operators in Europe such as Vodafone, Telefonica, and T-Mobile are looking for ways to block the Private Relay feature on iPhones with iOS 15.
The carriers have signed an open letter against releasing the feature in Europe, we quote from 9to5Mac.
The letter states that Private Relay prevents networks and servers from accessing important network data and metadata from user devices. In addition, they also said that this feature interfered with Europe's digital sovereignty.
But most importantly, for these operators, Private Relay is claimed to have an impact on the operator's ability to manage telecommunications networks efficiently.
It's not clear why the operators took issue with the existence of Private Relay, which basically functions like a virtual private network (VPN). Namely disguise the identity of the user when accessing certain services on the internet.
This kind of VPN service has been around for a long time and they have never had a problem with this kind of service.
But maybe they have a problem with Private Relay because it is easily accessible to more users. Because this feature is integrated in iOS 15 and can be accessed by anyone who subscribes to iCloud.
For now, on iOS 15.2, Apple still turns off Private Relay by default. But it seems they will enable this feature early on when it's past the beta testing stage.
Maybe the cellular operators don't accept the existence of Private Relay because, like the VPN feature, it makes them unable to sell services according to the internet package used by customers. Such as image compression and limiting high-resolution video streaming for customers on more expensive plans.
Private Relay is actually not available in all countries to follow local regulations. For example, this feature is not available in countries such as South Africa, Saudi Arabia, China, Belarus, Philippines, Kazakhstan, Colombia, Egypt, Turkmenistan, and Uganda.
