The fundamental issue is that a cell service provider has a natural monopoly. There can never be many of them, so there isn’t going to be much competition.
It’s also a pain to switch identifiers — changing a phone number is painful — so a cell provider is in possession of a unique identifier linked to location spanning many years. That’s valuable data.
Both a SIM and the phone’s radio in which it is inserted have unique identifiers visible to a carrier.
If one gets prepaid service in cash, it’s possible to not directly link those identifiers to an identity.
You can probably get your phone service from an SIP provider, maybe route the SIP traffic and all other data service through a VPN. That’ll obscure most unique information from the cell provider, and the SIP provider won’t even have geolocatable IP information, just a VPN endpoint. The SIP and VPN market is competitive; no natural monopoly there.
It’s still probably possible to link a cell ID to identity if one can cross-reference enough databases that do contain one’s personal identity linked to a location at a given time. Maybe if one gets a sufficiently-cheap cell modem that it can be swapped along with the SIM at regular intervals, so that there’s only a year-long period or whatever over which over which a cell service provider has a unique identity. If the phone number is linked to the SIP provider instead of a cell provider, then the barriers to swapping cell service across accounts go away.
I suppose one has to deal with the risk that the firmware on the modem might phone home with location data.
And, of course, all bets are off if an app running on one’s computer or cell phone can just obtain a unique identifier and location at a given time and phone home with that and let the app vendor sell it.
In the US at least, porting (transferring) a number from one provider to another takes (usually) ~5 minutes. You can even do it to/from landlines. The carrier/customer service might balk and try to keep you but a little persistence and it’s done. It’s been this way years before I got my first phone number, and that was almost 20 years ago now.
The fundamental issue is that a cell service provider has a natural monopoly. There can never be many of them, so there isn’t going to be much competition.
It’s also a pain to switch identifiers — changing a phone number is painful — so a cell provider is in possession of a unique identifier linked to location spanning many years. That’s valuable data.
Both a SIM and the phone’s radio in which it is inserted have unique identifiers visible to a carrier.
If one gets prepaid service in cash, it’s possible to not directly link those identifiers to an identity.
You can probably get your phone service from an SIP provider, maybe route the SIP traffic and all other data service through a VPN. That’ll obscure most unique information from the cell provider, and the SIP provider won’t even have geolocatable IP information, just a VPN endpoint. The SIP and VPN market is competitive; no natural monopoly there.
It’s still probably possible to link a cell ID to identity if one can cross-reference enough databases that do contain one’s personal identity linked to a location at a given time. Maybe if one gets a sufficiently-cheap cell modem that it can be swapped along with the SIM at regular intervals, so that there’s only a year-long period or whatever over which over which a cell service provider has a unique identity. If the phone number is linked to the SIP provider instead of a cell provider, then the barriers to swapping cell service across accounts go away.
I suppose one has to deal with the risk that the firmware on the modem might phone home with location data.
And, of course, all bets are off if an app running on one’s computer or cell phone can just obtain a unique identifier and location at a given time and phone home with that and let the app vendor sell it.
In the US at least, porting (transferring) a number from one provider to another takes (usually) ~5 minutes. You can even do it to/from landlines. The carrier/customer service might balk and try to keep you but a little persistence and it’s done. It’s been this way years before I got my first phone number, and that was almost 20 years ago now.