With an estimated one-third of the world’s population (about 2.6 billion people) still offline, predominantly in rural and low-income areas, FWA offers a fast, cost-effective way to reach the “last mile.” Unlike plugging a smartphone into a router, FWA uses specialised customer-premises equipment, along with spectrum licenses, to provide stable, high-speed links.

Its portability and lower construction costs make it ideal for areas where laying fibre is prohibitively expensive or slow.

In short, FWA brings fibre-like speeds to underserved areas in weeks or months, rather than years, helping to close the digital divide while opening new business opportunities for investors.

What is fixed wireless access?

Fixed Wireless Access is a broadband service designed for homes and businesses, delivered via a cellular network. As Ericsson explains, “FWA is a wireless connection that provides broadband access to a specific location, such as a home or enterprise premises. It enables high-speed internet via radio signal, without the need for physical cables.”

It typically involves a small antenna (customer premises equipment or CPE) mounted on the outside (or inside) of a building, which communicates with a nearby 4G/5G base station. While FWA can run on existing 4G LTE networks, 5G FWA offers much greater capacity. Because 5G supports much higher speeds and lower latency, it can deliver performance comparable to fibre optics, making it a true alternative even in cities.

FWA differs from personal hotspots or “tethering” in that the receiver is stationary and dedicated, which allows for unlimited data plans and guaranteed performance. In a way, FWA treats each home like a 5G customer, but fixed so that operators can offer symmetrical, high-capacity links similar to wired broadband.

As one telecom strategist put it, fixed wireless has moved from a niche solution to a “primary growth driver” for broadband expansion. The technology works best when homes stay in roughly the same location (no driving off with the router) and ideally have some line of sight to the cell tower. However, new equipment and the use of spectrum are extending the range and overcoming obstacles, widening FWA’s reach.

FWA and the digital divide

Worldwide, connectivity gaps are stark. In high-income countries, roughly 93% of people are online, but in low-income countries, only about 27% have internet access. Rural areas lag even further. Globally, 83% of urban dwellers are online versus only 48% in rural communities. In fact, of the 2.6 billion people still offline in 2024, 1.8 billion live in rural areas. This digital divide is not just statistics; it translates into missed opportunities in education, healthcare, commerce, and more. Providing affordable broadband to underserved populations could be transformative for emerging economies.

In this context, FWA is being embraced as a key bridging technology. Its low infrastructure cost, with no need to dig trenches for cable, can cut deployment expenses by roughly half in hard-to-wire areas.

Deploying FWA involves installing towers and dishes, which is much faster than stringing fibre across mountains or forests. Samsung’s network experts note that FWA “can reach the last mile” and is often “easy and fast to deploy,” making it ideal for unserved markets.

The cost savings also tend to be passed on to customers; for example, rural home internet plans over 4G/5G are often cheaper than legacy DSL or fibre services, aiding adoption in price-sensitive communities.

In remote regions of the United States and elsewhere, towers like this one are being equipped with 5G radios to serve fixed wireless customers. For instance, UScellular, in partnership with Ericsson, launched 5G millimetre-wave FWA service targeting rural and suburban homes.

In April 2022, the company began offering home internet speeds of several hundred Mbps in ten cities. Within months, nearly 180,000 households were able to access the service. Upgrading antenna technology has expanded its FWA coverage area by roughly 40 times, delivering speeds of up to 300 Mbps in areas previously too remote for cable.

Similar efforts are underway at other US carriers; a recent Accenture/ CTIA study finds that 5G FWA could economically serve 8.4 million rural US households, which is nearly half of all rural homes, with high-speed broadband. In the US, billions of dollars in federal subsidies are also being directed toward new FWA-friendly deployments, recognising it as a fast path to connect the hardest-to-reach communities.

Across the globe, governments and telecom companies are promoting FWA as a digital inclusion tool. In Bangladesh, for instance, regulators recently authorised mobile carriers to offer fixed wireless broadband to homes and offices. Under the new 5G guidelines, operators can now use their wireless spectrum to extend coverage into rural villages and urban edge areas where wired infrastructure is sparse.

One local newspaper noted that this move will “extend broadband coverage efficiently, especially in areas with limited wired infrastructure.” In India, Reliance Jio is already deploying FWA on its nationwide 5G network; Jio’s 5G “AirFiber” plans are reaching remote districts and fuelling explosive growth.

A June 2025 report notes that Jio’s FWA subscriber base has ballooned to 6.88 million, slightly surpassing the 6.85 million fixed-wireless users of US-based T-Mobile, making Jio poised to become the world’s largest FWA provider. In many parts of Sub-Saharan Africa, wireless broadband is often the only realistic option. Tarana Wireless, for example, is working with Microsoft’s Airband initiative to deploy “next-generation FWA” in several African countries.

In some regions of Africa, fewer than 30% of people have reliable internet today. Such efforts, using FWA radios capable of handling non-line-of-sight signals and interference, could rapidly improve connectivity for schools, clinics, and homes, even in rugged terrain.

In Latin America and the Caribbean, both governments and multilateral banks recognise significant opportunities. Currently, over 240 million people in Latin America lack internet access, which represents about one-third of the population.

Analysts from Ericsson note that many countries are beginning 5G rollouts with FWA use cases in mind because “FWA is ideal for places that are difficult to access with traditional fixed broadband.”

The Inter-American Development Bank even estimates that closing the region’s digital gap could boost GDP by up to 7.7% and create over 15 million jobs, which is a significant boost to economic growth, gains to which rapidly expanding broadband (whether wired or wireless) would contribute. In practice, some Latin operators have trialled 5G FWA in rural Peru and Brazil, and big carriers like Claro (America Movil) have signalled interest in using 5G home internet to reach unserved areas.

Overall, the message is clear: the areas hardest to wire tend to be exactly where digital connectivity is needed most for development, and FWA offers a practical way to bring broadband to those communities. By delivering multi-hundred-megabit service over the air, FWA can connect remote schools, telemedicine outposts, and low-income neighbourhoods that have fallen off the fibre map. It is already reshaping market dynamics.

For example, in 2023, over 90% of new broadband subscribers at Tier-1 carriers in the US came via FWA rather than fibre or cable. Operators everywhere are taking note. Even smaller regional ISPs and rural cooperatives see fixed wireless as a growth engine, and hardware vendors report that virtually every operator is now planning or deploying FWA networks.

Investment and market trends

FWA is also a bright spot for investors and equipment makers. The global market for fixed wireless broadband is booming. A recent industry forecast values the FWA market at about $36.5 billion in 2024, with projected growth to roughly $127.6 billion by 2032, which reflects a 17% CAGR. This rapid growth is primarily fueled by the need for connectivity in rural and underserved areas. The report notes that “growing demand for broadband in underserved and rural areas is driving market growth.”

Unsurprisingly, most of the early deployments have been in North America, which currently holds the highest share of the FWA market, but Asia-Pacific is expected to grow the fastest, thanks to initiatives in India, China, and Southeast Asia.

Major industry players are positioning themselves accordingly. Traditional telecom giants like Verizon, T-Mobile, AT&T (all in the US) and equipment vendors like Nokia and Ericsson are highlighted as top FWA players.

Indeed, each of the “big three” US wireless carriers has already launched 4G/5G home internet products and is investing in FWA-capable radio sites. On the vendor side, Nokia and Ericsson have boosted their FWA product lines in recent years. Nokia’s 5G AirScale and Lightspan products, and Ericsson’s FWA CPE and small-cell portfolios, are being sold into markets worldwide.

Even traditionally mobile-focused equipment makers are touting FWA. For example, Samsung has made statements about how its 5G radios can be used to cost-effectively extend broadband under US government subsidy programmes.

There is also a surge of private investment and partnerships in this space. United States-based startup Tarana Wireless, which makes so-called “next-generation FWA” gear optimised for NLoS rural use, has attracted over $400 million in R&D and capital to date.

In 2023, Tarana raised an additional $50 million from Digital Alpha, a digital infrastructure investor, to scale its deployments. Digital Alpha’s thesis is centred on funding wireless internet service providers that rely on FWA, recognising that this technology can “fundamentally change network performance and operator economics” for rural ISPs. Tarana’s C1 (Gigabit 1) platform is now used by hundreds of small ISPs in 21 countries, and its success stories have piqued investor interest.

Despite its promise, FWA also faces challenges. Many regions still lack sufficient mid-band 5G frequencies or the regulatory approvals for using them in fixed services. Without mid-band spectrum, operators may rely on crowded sub-6GHz or limited mmWave bands, affecting coverage or penetration.

FWA can claim to offer fibre-like speeds, but real-world throughput may vary based on distance, interference, and whether customers share a cell. Some early fixed wireless plans experienced speed fluctuations or data caps that limited user experience. Emerging “next-gen” FWA systems aim to reduce these issues, but rollout and operator expertise are still catching up with the technology hype.

Finally, bridging the digital divide is not just a technology problem but also involves local education and support. In some regions, even when high-speed internet is available, adoption is low due to affordability, digital literacy, or competing priorities. Effective FWA initiatives often pair network buildout with programmes for subsidised service, community training, or partnerships with schools and clinics.

The post FWA: The future of Internet access appeared first on International Finance.

Its arrival has been heralded as a digital lifeline for isolated communities, but it is also posing regulatory challenges and stirring debate. International Finance explores Starlink’s expansion in the Pacific, offering a balanced look at the opportunities it presents and the hurdles it faces.

What is Starlink?

Starlink is a satellite internet constellation with thousands of small satellites in low-Earth orbit. Launched and operated by SpaceX, these satellites fly much closer to Earth than traditional communications satellites, enabling low-latency, high-bandwidth internet connectivity on the ground.

Users access Starlink via a pizza-box-sized dish antenna (a terminal) that communicates with the passing satellites. The signal is then routed through ground stations and into the global internet. In essence, Starlink beams the web from the sky directly to users’ homes, bypassing the need for undersea cables or extensive land infrastructure.

This model differs from older satellite services. Traditional providers like Kacific rely on a single geostationary satellite positioned tens of thousands of kilometres above the equator. Geostationary satellites stay fixed relative to Earth’s rotation, so a dish can point at one spot in the sky. However, they often suffer from higher latency and require larger ground equipment.

Starlink’s low-flying satellites reduce latency dramatically, at the cost of needing many satellites moving across the sky and sophisticated tracking by the dish. OneWeb, a British-backed venture, is another LEO satellite internet provider eyeing the Pacific market. Together, these systems represent a new generation of space-based internet that can reach places traditional broadband has never touched.

Starlink’s Pacific debut and expansion

Starlink’s journey into the Pacific has unfolded over the past few years, beginning with a dramatic entrance in Tonga and spreading to many islands. Below is a timeline of key milestones.

In January 2022, a massive undersea volcanic eruption severed Tonga’s only international fibre-optic cable, plunging the Kingdom into digital darkness. In response, Elon Musk offered to send Starlink terminals to help. Within weeks, SpaceX set up a ground station in neighbouring Fiji and donated 50 Starlink terminals to Tonga.

Tonga’s former Prime Minister Siaosi Sovaleni hailed it as a “paradoxical silver lining,” noting that cutting-edge satellite technology arrived as a result of the disaster. The Starlink units were deployed to remote outer islands hardest hit by the tsunami, providing free high-speed internet until Tonga’s cable could be repaired.

In 2023, there were some early reactions and restrictions. As Starlink’s constellation grew, Pacific nations began grappling with how to regulate it. In Samoa, authorities initially banned Starlink in January 2023 due to unauthorised use of terminals, only to reconsider a few months later.

By March 2023, Samoa’s cabinet approved Starlink in principle, aiming to partner with SpaceX so that some revenue stays in-country. Meanwhile, Vanuatu’s regulator in early 2023 warned that Starlink use was illegal without a license. Vanuatu reportedly banned unlicensed Starlink gear in February 2023, reflecting concerns about interference and regulatory oversight.

By late 2023, the first licenses were granted, and demand grew. By the end of 2023, some Pacific nations had officially adopted Starlink. Fiji became a leader by licensing Starlink in November 2023, allowing the service to operate commercially. According to Fijian officials, Starlink connectivity had spread to “over 300 islands” across Fiji by May 2024.

In Niue, however, authorities grew alarmed at Starlink units quietly appearing on the island. With no license issued to SpaceX, Niue declared Starlink operations illegal, setting the stage for a ban in 2024.

Then came the legal showdowns and stopgap measures. The new year saw mixed fortunes for Starlink. In Papua New Guinea, the government announced in January 2024 that it had granted a five-year license for Starlink, calling it a “New Year’s gift” to the nation’s tech sector. However, competing providers and regulators raised questions, and by August 2024, the Starlink license in PNG had become entangled in a court challenge, now under judicial review.

PNG’s telecom authority even confiscated some Starlink kits brought in without permission, signalling that service would be on hold until the courts decide. Meanwhile, Tonga faced a mini-crisis when, on June 29, 2024, a domestic undersea cable outage cut off two of its islands from Tongatapu. At the same time, some Tongans had begun using Starlink without authorisation.

On July 9, Tongan officials ordered Starlink to cease operations due to a lack of an operating license. Just ten days later, recognising the ongoing outage, the government granted a six-month provisional permit for Starlink so that connectivity could be restored in the outer islands while a full license was processed.

Toward the end of 2024, the Pacific saw novel implementations of Starlink. Nauru opened the region’s first “Starlink community gateway” in December 2024. This is essentially a high-capacity Starlink installation meant to feed an entire community or country’s network, expanding internet access beyond individual user terminals. Similarly, in the Federated States of Micronesia, the state of Kosrae launched its own Starlink community gateway in February 2025.

Meanwhile, Vanuatu, which had initially banned Starlink, softened its stance. After back-to-back cyclones caused extensive damage in early 2023, Vanuatu granted a temporary restricted license in 2024 to allow Starlink during disaster recovery.

By mid-2025, Starlink boasted availability in over 100 countries worldwide, and the Pacific Islands are increasingly part of that map. According to regional reports, Starlink access is now on offer in many of the 18 member states of the Pacific Islands Forum, including Fiji, Tonga, Vanuatu, and others, though not all have formalised the service. In July 2025, Tonga moved from provisional permission to a full operating license for Starlink.

As of 2025, the momentum is evident because satellite internet is becoming a fixture in the Pacific, even as each nation finds its own path to accommodate or restrict the new technology. Fiji has emerged as an enthusiastic early adopter of Starlink’s technology. Fiji officially licensed Starlink in late 2023, with Deputy Prime Minister Manoa Kamikamica touting the service as a “game changer for Fiji” that will boost connectivity during natural disasters and for remote islands.

One of the most celebrated uses of Starlink in Fiji has been in education. In a government-led initiative, Starlink units were installed at six remote schools in the interior of Fiji’s largest island, Viti Levu. These are villages that previously had little to no internet access. Thanks to Starlink, students and teachers in places like Nakorosule and Nadarivatu can browse online learning materials and even join virtual lessons — activities once unimaginable in these areas.

The Education Ministry noted that these six schools are now benefiting from “high-speed, low-latency” internet, unlocking everything from cloud-based teaching tools to improved school administration. This aligns with a global “GIGA” initiative to connect every school to the internet by 2030, and Fiji’s government appears keen to leapfrog decades of limited infrastructure using satellite broadband.

Beyond schools, Starlink is extending connectivity to Fiji’s far-flung communities. With over 100 inhabited islands, Fiji has long struggled to connect rural villagers who live beyond the reach of fibre-optic cables or even cellular towers.

In stark contrast to Fiji, the tiny Pacific Island of Niue took a hard line against Starlink, at least initially. Niue’s government outright banned Starlink usage in 2024, warning that anyone operating the service without a license could face fines of up to about $200 or even three months in prison.

The sudden ban came after officials discovered several Starlink units had appeared on Niue without authorisation. In Niue, all communications services are governed by an ageing Communications Act of 1989, which requires operators to be licensed. The island’s lone telecom provider, state-owned Telecom Niue, relies on satellite bandwidth and a 4G mobile network to serve its 1,700 residents. Unlicensed Starlink dishes, in the government’s view, threatened to bypass these regulations and potentially undermine the local telecom system.

Niue’s Minister of Infrastructure, Crossley Tatui, even asked SpaceX to geofence or disable Starlink in Niue’s territory. As of mid-2024, that request had reportedly gone unanswered, and a handful of residents continued to use Starlink illicitly.

One of them is Glen Jackson, a Niuean entrepreneur and musician, who has become an outspoken advocate for the service. His multimedia company livestreams events like funerals and sports tournaments. It was nearly impossible with Niue’s limited 4G network. Jackson noted that Starlink’s faster upload speeds allow him to reliably stream from villages that previously had little bandwidth. On downloads, Niue’s 4G might deliver 40-50 Mbps on a good day, whereas Starlink gave him 200-380 Mbps. It was definitely a transformative difference.

Tonga’s experience with Starlink encapsulates both the life-saving potential of satellite internet and the complexities of integrating it into a national framework. As noted in the timeline, Tonga was the first Pacific country to use Starlink, albeit out of sheer necessity. When the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai volcano erupted catastrophically in January 2022, it wreaked physical devastation and severed Tonga’s only international fibre-optic cable.

Overnight, this nation of 100,000 was cut off from the world. In the crisis, Starlink became a lifeline. SpaceX’s donated terminals enabled connectivity in some of the worst-hit outer islands, allowing villagers to communicate and access information while the undersea cable was repaired. Tongan officials expressed deep gratitude for the assistance. So much so that the then PM Sovaleni quipped that Elon Musk likely hadn’t known much about Tonga before, “but gave generously” when the country was in need.

After the emergency period, Tonga’s traditional internet links were restored, and the Starlink units were presumably deactivated or returned. But the episode planted a seed. Tongans had tasted the “decent speeds and stable connections” that a LEO satellite system could provide, even in remote villages. Interest in Starlink remained. By 2023, some Tongans acquired Starlink kits through unofficial means.

This caught the attention of Tonga’s Ministry of Communications. The government was also mindful of its domestic telecom operators, state-owned Tonga Communications Corp and private Digicel, which provide internet via fibre and 4G networks. Regulators wanted to avoid a Wild West scenario of unauthorised dishes.

Things came to a head in mid-2024 when a section of Tonga’s domestic subsea cable network went down, cutting off two island groups. In those outer islands, people and businesses turned to whatever connectivity they could, including some rogue Starlink setups. Initially, authorities moved to crack down on the unlicensed use.

However, they faced public pressure due to the ongoing outage. The compromise was a temporary six-month permit for Starlink starting in July 2024. This allowed Starlink to operate legally in Tonga for the first time, albeit under conditions set by the government. Officials said the permit was a “pivotal step” to address connectivity needs while a full license was being finalised.

Fast forward to mid-2025, and Tonga is fully on board with Starlink. The Ministry of Communications granted an official operating license to SpaceX, enabling Starlink to “deliver high-speed internet across Tonga” on a normal commercial basis.

Approvals, bans, and uncertainty

Navigating the regulatory landscape of the Pacific has proven to be one of Starlink’s biggest challenges. There is no one-size-fits-all approach, as each island nation has its own laws, telecom landscape, and priorities. The result is a patchwork of approvals, bans, and grey zones that can be confusing for consumers.

Countries like Fiji, Tonga, and Palau are welcoming Starlink. The governments of these nations have approved Starlink through formal licenses or interim permits. The advantage for consumers is obvious because where Starlink is approved, people can legally buy the equipment and pay the monthly fees in local currency, often via a domestic reseller, without fear of penalties.

Indeed, in approved markets, the Starlink website will ship a kit straight to your door. In countries like Vanuatu and Samoa, Starlink is being allowed but cautiously. Samoa’s regulator, for instance, said it might take up to two years to fully license SpaceX, but in the meantime, Samoans have been permitted to import Starlink kits for personal use. This creates a de facto temporary legality. People can get online with Starlink now while the bureaucracy catches up later.

Then there are the holdouts and ambiguous cases. Niue’s ban is one example of an explicit “no.” Another was Papua New Guinea’s legal saga. After the initial license announcement in January 2024, PNG’s National Information and Communication Technology Authority faced pushback. Critics argued the license was rushed, and by August, the courts put the license on hold pending a judicial review.

Until that’s resolved, importing or operating Starlink in PNG without special permission is technically illegal, and authorities showed they would enforce this by seizing unauthorised equipment at customs. Vanuatu signalled that any Starlink gear brought in outside the approved emergency use would be confiscated unless and until full authorisation is granted.

A Starlink terminal is essentially a transmitter/receiver, so it normally should be certified in each country. Some nations, like Samoa, initially banned Starlink partly because the equipment had not gone through this certification process, raising theoretical safety concerns.

Additionally, there’s the economic angle, since telecommunication is often a significant revenue source for Pacific governments, either through state-owned operators or licensing fees from private companies. If everyone suddenly buys internet service from a US-based company via credit card, how do local providers survive, and how do governments get their due? Niue’s insistence on licenses and talk of taxing such services stems from this concern.

For consumers, the regulatory diversity can be frustrating. In practical terms, a person on one island might set up Starlink and enjoy fast internet, while a person on the next island could get fined for doing the same thing. This has led to some creative workarounds. Some Pacific Islanders have taken advantage of Starlink’s roaming feature. They purchase the kit in a country where it’s authorised (like New Zealand or Fiji), then use it back home where it’s not officially allowed, essentially “roaming” on a foreign subscription.

Starlink’s signals don’t respect political boundaries, so the hardware will work as long as the location is within the satellite coverage footprint. This technical reality is running up against legal boundaries drawn on maps. It’s worth noting that the regulatory landscape in the Pacific is evolving quickly. As the Asia Times observed, governance of Starlink in the Pacific remains “a mixed bag,” and change is likely. Pacific governments talk to each other, and many are watching their neighbours’ experiments.

If Tonga’s partnership model proves successful, others may imitate it. If a ban like Niue’s proves untenable or unpopular, it may eventually soften. In the interim, consumers are advised to stay informed about their country’s stance. What is perfectly legal in Fiji or Tonga now could still be a grey area in places like the Solomon Islands or the Marshall Islands, for example, if formal approvals are pending.

The Pacific’s digital future

As global satellite providers race to connect the most remote corners of the planet, the Pacific Islands stand to be one of the greatest test cases—and beneficiaries—of this revolution. The vast oceanic distances and sparsely distributed populations have long made the Pacific a connectivity challenge. Traditional infrastructure alone was never going to be enough; there will likely always be villages beyond the reach of fibre-optic cables or even cell towers. Satellite internet, led by Starlink’s widespread rollout, is now filling those gaps. In doing so, it is reshaping the region’s digital infrastructure from above.

What might the Pacific’s connected future look like? We can imagine a hybrid network, where undersea cables link the main population centres, while constellations of satellites blanket the blue gaps in between, ready to link up any community or emergency responder that needs it. In this vision, an island struck by a cyclone can switch to satellite backup within hours, or a remote outer island can host an online workshop with experts in another country. Global satellite coverage could democratise internet access in a way that was simply not feasible before.

Starlink’s expansion across the Pacific Islands brings hope and challenges. While it provides high-speed internet to remote regions, it also sparks regulatory debates and hurdles. The technology offers significant benefits, especially in education and disaster response, but local governments must navigate complex legal landscapes. As more countries adopt Starlink, the region’s digital future seems brighter. However, each island’s unique approach to regulation means the path forward will be varied, and some obstacles are likely to remain.

The post Starlink: The Pacific Islands’ digital lifeline appeared first on International Finance.

The research paper further shows how this censorship mechanism can be used as a weapon to stop UDP traffic between any host in China and those in other countries. Researchers from the University of Massachusetts Amherst, activist group Great Firewall Report, Stanford University and University of Colorado Boulder worked together with different open-source communities to incorporate QUIC-based circumvention techniques into all of the main QUIC-based tools, Mozilla Firefox, and the quic-go library.

“We [..] demonstrate that this censorship mechanism can be weaponised to block UDP traffic between arbitrary hosts in China and the rest of the world. We collaborate with various open-source communities to integrate circumvention strategies into Mozilla Firefox, the quic-go library, and all major QUIC-based circumvention tools,” the paper stated.

The alleged “vulnerabilities” are caused by China’s efforts to block Quick UDP Internet Connections (QUIC), a transport layer network protocol that is intended to take the place of Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) due to its inherent security, adaptability, and reduced performance problems.

QUIC was created in 2012 by Google employees, and at least 10% of websites use the protocol, including many Google and Meta websites. Blocking QUIC connections appears to be an extension of the GFW’s blocking of both of these organisations, though researchers point out that not all QUIC traffic is successfully blocked.

Attacks could prevent all open or root DNS resolvers outside of China from being accessed from within the state due to the vulnerability of the mechanism used to block QUIC connections, leading to widespread DNS failures.

“Defending against this attack while still censoring is difficult due to the stateless nature and ease of spoofing UDP packets. Careful engineering will be needed to allow censors to apply targeted blocks in QUIC, while simultaneously preventing availability attacks,” the paper concluded.

The post China’s attempt to upgrade “Great Firewall” didn’t yield desired results: Study appeared first on International Finance.

From Bulletproof Hosting To Proxy Networks

For decades, criminals relied on so-called bulletproof hosting: web servers in permissive jurisdictions that ignored takedown notices and law enforcement requests. Bulletproof hosts leased space to criminals and “turned a blind eye” to illicit content such as spam, malware command servers, or banned data.

However, that model is fading. Global law enforcement has increasingly targeted these hosting providers, seizing servers and indicting operators. As a result, experts say cybercriminals are abandoning dedicated illicit servers in favour of proxy networks that obscure their traffic.

Longtime researcher Thibault Seret notes that after police cracked down on bulletproof hosts, both criminals and their service providers “migrated to an alternative approach,” using proxies and VPNs to hide malicious traffic. Today’s proxy services rotate and blend customer IP addresses, often without keeping logs.

Seret told WIRED that in such a system, “you cannot technically distinguish which traffic in a node is bad and which traffic is good, because all traffic looks the same to the outside observer.”

In short, once an attacker’s data merges with normal web use, separating the two becomes a nightmare.

Residential Proxies And Consumer Devices

A key tool in this shift is the residential proxy. Unlike a traditional VPN or datacenter proxy, a residential proxy uses real IP addresses assigned by internet service providers (ISPs) to home or office devices.

In practice, this means the proxy network is built on ordinary gadgets: old Android phones, personal laptops, smart routers, and even voice assistants or smart TVs. Malware or proxy apps (sometimes installed without the owner’s knowledge) turn these devices into exit nodes. The result is a decentralised network of endpoints that resemble everyday internet users.

Think of it like this: instead of sending malicious traffic from a suspicious data centre IP, the attack is routed through a random person’s internet connection in, say, Ohio or Spain. To a website or security scanner, the request appears to originate from a legitimate household.

As Trend Micro researchers explain, “A residential proxy is a proxy on an internet-connected device… configured to provide connectivity for third parties,” often without the owner’s awareness.

In effect, criminals “rent” these hundreds of millions of IP addresses to disguise their actions as normal browsing.

This disguise is highly effective. Residential proxy services offer “real, rotating IP addresses assigned to homes and offices… that can run on consumer devices, even old Android phones or low-end laptops.” Such networks offer strong anonymity and can shield malicious traffic by blending it with benign data.

Attackers exploit this to bypass corporate and government scanners. In Seret’s words, “the magic of a proxy service… is you cannot tell who’s who.”

Malware connections now ride along with innocent chat, video calls, or streaming traffic, making red flags nearly invisible.

Modern residential proxy tools even let criminals target specific locations. Reports on the NSOCKS network show it offered proxies by state, city, or even ZIP code. Buyers could purchase a few hours of access (for just a few dollars) to proxy servers in, say, California, and carry out targeted spam or login attacks without raising suspicion. And because these proxies run on home devices, most are never flagged as malicious by security firms.

Cybersecurity firm Lumen Black Lotus Labs found that only about 10% of infected router-based proxies in a large botnet were detected by VirusTotal scanners. This means the other 90% “consistently avoid network monitoring tools with a high degree of success.”

Botnets And Proxy Marketplaces

Behind many residential proxies are botnets of compromised devices. Malware recruits large groups of routers, IoT gadgets, and PCs. One example is the Ngioweb trojan, which has infected tens of thousands of routers and IoT devices worldwide. In late 2024, researchers at Lumen and Cisco Talos reported that Ngioweb was the engine behind NSOCKS, a notorious proxy service.

At least 80% of NSOCKS’s 35,000 active proxies came from devices controlled by the Ngioweb botnet. These machines were then “rented out” on proxy marketplaces, allowing buyers to select exit nodes by city, ISP, or device type. In doing so, they could choose exactly where and how their traffic would appear to originate.

This model has become a lucrative business. The now-disrupted AnyProxy and 5socks services are prime examples. Operating since the early 2000s, they ran botnets of old routers and sold subscriptions granting proxy access to other criminals. In a 2025 FBI-led takedown (Operation “Moonlander”), authorities seized these networks.

Court filings reveal the operators built two proxy networks by infecting thousands of home routers worldwide since at least 2004. They advertised roughly 7,000 proxy IPs and collected around \$46 million in subscriber fees over the years. In essence, a lone criminal could pay a monthly fee and have their traffic routed through dozens of real home IPs, thereby hiding their own device’s identity.

These cases show how consumer devices are being weaponised. Often, the targeted hardware is beyond its support life: old “end-of-life” routers or outdated smart gadgets with known vulnerabilities. Criminals exploit these weaknesses to install proxy malware.

As one Lumen report put it, the malware “steals bandwidth… without impacting end users” to create a stealthy proxy service. The average consumer might not even notice anything amiss. But from a security standpoint, this vast pool of home-based IP addresses is a goldmine for attackers.

The Law Enforcement Challenge

All these advances present a growing challenge for defenders. Traditional security tools rely heavily on IP reputation and traffic patterns. But if malicious traffic blends in with legitimate user behaviour, automated tools struggle to distinguish it. Seret notes bluntly that even large datasets can’t untangle good from bad traffic in these mixed nodes. And because residential proxies use so many different ISPs and geographic locations, an organisation’s blacklist of “bad” IPs becomes far less effective. A Trend Micro study explains that the wide availability of legitimate-looking home IPs has “diminished” the value of blocklists, forcing a shift toward more sophisticated detection methods.

For investigators, attribution becomes a maze. Ronnie Tokazowski of Intelligence for Good points out that if an attack appears to come from the same IP range as a company’s employees, it’s nearly impossible to determine who’s behind it.

In practice, law enforcement often ends up chasing ghosts. Takedown requests to internet service providers are futile when the “bad” traffic routes through dozens of unwitting participants. Even when proxy networks are exposed, dismantling them does not solve the underlying issue. Proxies have become a fundamental part of the internet, used by everyone.

Some progress has been made through international operations. The FBI and other agencies have disrupted major proxy botnets and charged their operators (as with AnyProxy and 5socks), but new ones emerge quickly.

Each takedown reveals only part of the bigger picture. After Moonlander, for instance, Lumen’s analysts warned that similar networks remain hidden, often “cloaked” within ordinary traffic. And because many proxies reside on equipment whose owners have long since stopped updating it, the problem persists at the root of the consumer internet.

A Digital Arms Race

The rapid rise of residential proxy abuse underscores a simple reality: the tools available to criminals are evolving faster than defenders’ playbooks. Cybercriminals have created an invisibility shield that even sophisticated security operations struggle to penetrate. By turning millions of homes into unwitting traffic mixers, they’ve gained the upper hand.

Experts caution that stopping this trend will not be easy. There are no quick fixes. Seret stated that even shutting down one proxy service will not end the problem, because new ones can quickly emerge using fresh devices.

In the meantime, organisations and law enforcement must adapt. Analysts recommend strengthening endpoint defences—by securing routers, IoT devices, and employee hardware—and developing more advanced behavioural analysis to detect anomalies beyond just IP addresses.

Until those defences catch up, much of the internet’s dirty work will remain hidden in the crowd of ordinary traffic. As one cybersecurity team put it, malicious activity “could be hiding right under our noses, disguised as ordinary digital life.”

The post IF Insights: How cybercriminals mask malicious web traffic appeared first on International Finance.

“Positioned itself as a refuge from X, the site formerly known as Twitter. For nearly two decades, Twitter had been considered the internet’s town square, chaotic and often rancorous but informative and diversely discursive. Then, after the tech billionaire turned Trump backer Elon Musk acquired the platform, in October of 2022, it devolved into a circus of right-wing conspiracy theories. Liberals began fleeing, and Bluesky in turn accumulated more than ten million users by the fall of 2024, making it one of the fastest-growing social networks. But the post-election influx proved to be of a different order, turning Bluesky into what one tech blogger compared to a Macy’s at the start of Black Friday sales,” The New Yorker summed up things with these words.

The platform has been grappling with a notable challenge: a unique problem with detecting humour, something that has personally affected internet personality Amy Brown.

What are we talking about?

Amy Brown was not yelling. She didn’t cry. She wasn’t vomiting. However, on Bluesky, she claimed to be doing all three at once. What was the reason? During a February business trip to Ohio, Brown’s husband stopped by a Walgreens (American pharmacy store chain). He told her that the prices here were lower than in California, where they live.

Because of the price difference, she posted that she was crying, screaming, and throwing up. However, the “joke problem” kicked in, as she was told by several Bluesky users that she was exaggerating and that no one could possibly care that much. While the replies were accurate (as they tried to invoke the basic laws of human body functions), they all missed the point: she was referring to one of the most popular sayings on the internet: one that is so widely used that it has its own Spotify compilation name.

Brown faced a unique challenge with humour detection that anyone familiar with Twitter/X and now navigating the younger, more serious social network Bluesky would recognise. Some users struggle to understand jokes, while others seem to deliberately miss the point in order to make a different statement.

Many Bluesky users transitioned from X, a platform where controversial figures were livetweeting the degradation of US infrastructure. This shift represents a much larger issue. However, for those new to Bluesky, the perceived ignorance or self-seriousness of many users can be quite frustrating.

In 2023, Brown, who had previously worked as Wendy’s social media manager, joined Bluesky. After nearly two hours of impersonating Elon Musk on November 4, 2022, her X account was banned. The “incident” occurred soon after X made the paid verification announcement.

Brown changed her display name to “Elon Musk (real)” and her profile picture changed to a picture of a balding business entrepreneur. While she knew her actions on the microblogging website might result in her ban, she accepted the possibility.

Now she believes that there is still a lot of “popular sayings on the internet” kind of humour on Bluesky, but surprisingly many people are perplexed by it. There are factors behind it. Let’s start with the conflict between former Facebook and X users.

Brooklyn-based freelance writer Ashwin Rodrigues said, “Anyone who has spent time on the Everything App is familiar with Twitter’s idiom, which consists of ironic posts, in-group allusions, and platform-specific history. All of that inside jokes and sarcasm were with them when they left X. Former heavy users of Facebook, Instagram, and Threads, on the other hand, are used to their own standards of humour. Facebook, at least before it turned into Click FarmVille for engagement bait and ads for strangely specific custom novelty tees, was the opposite of Twitter, which felt like a purposeful way to interact with mostly strangers and that a familiar face might make the user feel horrified. Broadcast media also helped Bluesky gain a lot of users.”

“MSNBC featured several segments about the social network, including appearances on Morning Joe, The Weekend, All In With Chris Hayes, and The Rachel Maddow Show. Regular MSNBC viewers who made the leap may not be as accustomed to the tone and manner of online discourse on the shrewd social web,” he remarked.

Then comes the tendency of the technology to display random posts to random users through algorithmically curated content, similar to Bluesky’s Discover feed, which, in Ashwin’s opinion, is worsening the platform’s ability to detect humour.

“When an ex-Twitter user describes in detail what they would do to the Hamburglar if they saw him in person, a Maddow referral on Bluesky may react with real horror and bewilderment. There is an issue between the keyboard and chair, which is also a PEBKAC issue,” he added.

Make humour great again

“A person cannot be made to understand a joke. Anger is the only more pointless reaction. If there is one thing that these diverse groups have in common, it is a distaste for large tech companies run by unpleasant CEOs and a desire to post in the language of their once-favourite platforms. Each person has a unique form of brain damage. I understand people who find the joke hard to understand. However, my sympathies are more with those who are attempting to make them,” Ashwin observed.

A 2024 story from Axios claimed that America is experiencing a gullibility crisis. Nobody can tell if a screenshot is a joke, a lie, AI, or a manipulated image.

Comedian Josh Gondelman, who previously worked as a writer and producer on Desus and Mero and wrote for “Last Week Tonight with John Oliver,” claims that the political environment has made the problem worse.

According to Gondelman’s memory, at some point during the previous six months, Bluesky reached a user base that was sufficiently active to be entertaining and helpful.

He laughs and adds, “But that also means it hit the tipping point where it’s populated enough to be annoying.”

Ignatz Award-winning cartoonist, author, and illustrator Mattie Lubchansky says she is “mainly a joke-posting kind of person.”

Bluesky’s humour-detection problem is a component of a larger phenomenon she has noticed, which she refers to as “riff collapse.”

The day after the 2025 Oscars, Lubchansky posted, “I haven’t seen any of the Oscar movies this year, nor have I seen any movie ever made. I’m afraid that the people trapped inside the screen will be angry at me for not helping them escape; and once they are out, I will be punished. Anyway, here’s how the awards validated an opinion I already had.”

The ensuing responses were sincere disagreements and opinions regarding Oscar-nominated movies. A few people wanted suggestions for movies. It was suggested, without irony, that she read “The Purple Rose of Cairo”. It appears that only a small number of people realised she was kidding.

According to Lubchansky, she witnesses this kind of “riff collapse” every day and believes it is caused by the surge of new users from Meta and X.

However, there has long been an annoyance with new social media sites. Longtime users will continue to be irritated by newcomers, and networks will hopefully continue to appear.

When people first started using the internet in the early to mid-1990s, it was frequently when they started college. Several new users would sign up for their university’s network in September each year and begin exploring the discussion groups and forums.

Technologist and writer Anil Dash said, “The internet old timers would be very frustrated, because the new people didn’t know the social norms. The exact phenomenon that we are currently witnessing. The majority of internet users dreaded September more than any other month. Everyone can now access the internet at any time thanks to AOL. The Telecommunications Act of 1996, which deregulated the telecom sector and connected homes and businesses nationwide to the internet, coincided with AOL’s rise to prominence. This period was called the Eternal September, with wave after wave of newbies getting online.”

LiveJournal and even Twitter have shown the same pattern. Ashton Kutcher, an investor and actor, challenged CNN in 2009 to see whose account could reach one million Twitter followers first. Kutcher emerged victorious. Due to the stunt, the microblogging platform experienced a surge in users.

As per Lubchansky, people have a chance to consider their response manners at this time.

“Read the whole post before you respond. Take a moment to respond. And if you’re going to respond with a joke, and we’re not friends already, go look and see if somebody’s made it already. Because there’s a really good chance they have,” Lubchansky said.

Meanwhile, Brown considers the block function on Bluesky to be a favour to its recipient.

“If someone comes into my comments and they just really, really don’t understand, usually I just block them so we don’t run into each other again. No hard feelings. I’m not trying to repeat the part of Twitter where the internet makes me mad every day,” she noted.

It’s a different approach than the norm on X, where quote-tweets viciously insulting the original post are part of the platform’s noxious fabric.

Satirical site “The Onion” has the fifth-largest Bluesky account, with over 1.2 million followers. Onion CEO Ben Collins doesn’t mind people replying to jokes in earnest. On the contrary, he says it’s “the funniest part of the internet.”

“It means more people are seeing your jokes. If everyone is immediately breaking out into uproarious applause at your joke, your audience is too small. As someone who regularly used and posted on Twitter for years, I share the frustration when one of my jokey posts is misread or taken as fact. But it also strikes me as unfair to shame someone because they haven’t been slamming their head on the same wall of the internet that I have. Not everyone crawled here from the radioactive sewer of X. As we all get settled along with our new neighbours, it might be helpful to remember that. If not, at least Bluesky has very robust blocking features,” Ashwin concluded.

The post Is Bluesky having a humour block? appeared first on International Finance.

September 10, 2024, was a legal catastrophe for Apple and Google. This was a rare victory for the European Union’s (EU) regulatory framework in its ongoing battle with big tech. While Google was unable to appeal a €2.4 billion fine for abusing its dominance in online searches, the European Court of Justice decided that Apple should reimburse the Irish tax authorities €13 billion in overdue taxes.

This was not a short-term victory for the EU’s former competition commissioner, Margrethe Vestager, a fierce opponent of big tech to her detractors and a champion of fair competition to her allies.

A worldwide crackdown

The EU is not alone in its efforts to control the companies that dominate digital search and advertising (Google), e-commerce (Amazon), social networks (Meta), and cellphones (Apple). There is an ongoing global wave of regulatory crackdowns on the dominant digital companies, extending from the United States to India. Governments use antitrust laws, an outdated weapon against this new foe, and the threat of mergers as the last punishment to force violators to comply.

Big tech is the target of such a strong reaction for four reasons. One is the long-standing worry among antitrust scholars and regulators that competition in the tech sector is dwindling as a result of major corporations using their power to hinder new competitors, which stunts economic growth and innovation.

Regulators like Vestager and her US counterpart Lina Khan consider themselves contemporary counterparts of the first US president to take on monopolies, Theodore Roosevelt.

Christopher Sagers, a specialist in antitrust law at Cleveland State University, argues that the antitrust activity of the early 20th century serves as a precedent for the increasing attention Big Tech is receiving due to the rapid changes in technology.

Politics also comes into play. Scepticism toward elites, large corporations, and the media is the foundation of both left and right populism. Tech companies and their executives, like Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook, serve as prime examples of this.

Rising geopolitical tensions and deglobalization are also forcing governments to control multinational firms, with antitrust laws essentially turning into protectionist instruments. Measures against US IT businesses may be connected to EU concerns about the bloc’s decline in competitiveness, which were articulated in a recent report written by former ECB chief Mario Draghi.

Platform economies have finally reached a critical point. The degree of horizontal and vertical integration these businesses have attained is remarkable given the growing convergence of digital technology. When you think of Google, it is not only a business but also an ecosystem that encompasses email, mobile operating systems, and internet search, all within its domain.

The valuation of its parent firm, Alphabet, which holds more than 4% of the S&P 500 stock market index, reflects that. Amazon has created its own e-commerce empire, but Facebook and Apple are similar in their extensive businesses.

Governments are facing pressure to create equal opportunities for software developers and Amazon’s suppliers. Regulators are now compelled to act before it’s too late due to the emergence of AI. However, because the consequences are uncertain and the actions taken may be ineffective, this complexity is precisely what makes antitrust litigation against computer firms difficult.

Breaking up is difficult

Big tech now has to contend with authorities that have a robust antitrust agenda after decades of unchecked expansion.

Jonathan Kanter, the head of the Department of Justice’s (DoJ) antitrust unit, has made it his goal to crack down on digital oligopolies, and Lina Khan, the chair of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), established herself as a prominent scholar with a seminal paper on Amazon’s monopolistic practices. Regulators believe that antitrust laws have been underutilised for a long time, especially when it comes to possible emerging competitors.

According to John Yun, a former FTC executive and antitrust law expert who teaches at George Mason University, there is a belief that conglomerates are becoming more significant in terms of the scrutiny they merit and that mergers are too permissive.

For the EU, competition is just as important as competitiveness when it comes to regulating big tech. The primary target of this regulatory onslaught at the moment is Google. The DoJ suggested in October 2024 that dismantling the company would be one way to disrupt its monopoly on internet searches.

Judge Amit Mehta declared that the company had engaged in “monopolistic” behaviour in its quest for search supremacy and had broken antitrust laws.

Google may be forced to provide solutions, like sharing search data with rival companies or even selling off its Chrome browser and Android smartphone operating system, which it uses to advertise its search engine. Importantly, it might have to renounce a $20 billion exclusivity deal with Apple that sets Google as the default search engine in Safari, the company’s browser. We anticipate a ruling by August, despite Google’s anticipated appeal to the Supreme Court.

The antitrust issues with Alphabet don’t stop there. A separate DoJ action has also been filed against the company for engaging in anti-competitive behaviour in its digital advertising division. Despite its less well-known nature compared to its dominance in search engines, advertising effectively regulates supply, demand, measurement, and online ad auctions, making it the company’s true asset.

Furthermore, a San Francisco court ordered Alphabet to make Android available to competitors in October 2024, allowing Android apps to be sold on app stores other than Google Play and be paid for using different methods.

According to Sagers from Cleveland State University, Google may be an exception even though break-up orders are uncommon because courts dislike them and governments primarily use them as a negotiating tool to scare businesses into making concessions.

The company has been accused of a variety of anti-competitive practices and has established power in several industries, so “the situation that Google currently finds itself in maybe uncommonly favourable to a breakup remedy,” he says.

He contends that the government’s entire thesis is that Google leverages its control of various components of the “ad stack” to drive out rivals and raise costs, making the separation of its ad tech division the most likely course of action. They may be less inclined to act in an anti-competitive manner if the various components are divided up and given to different owners.

Digital platforms have created network effects, which means that they offer a service whose appeal is based on the strength of the crowds: the more people using it, the better it is. This explains why there haven’t been many tech breakups. Since the resulting companies would not be able to achieve prior efficiencies or might even attempt to combine again, breaking them up is impracticable and costly.

“The government might argue that if Chrome and Android were broken off into separate firms, which don’t directly profit from search engine ad revenues, they would no longer have the incentive to give preference to Google search over competing search engines,” says Sagers, indicating that a structural remedy for Google’s search dominance would make sense in this particular case.

Apple is facing a DoJ antitrust action for using its dominating position in the US smartphone market—roughly two out of every three cellphones sold in the US are iPhones—to make it more difficult for customers to switch to third-party software and hardware.

The FTC is also pursuing antitrust complaints against Amazon and Meta, alleging that the latter has stifled competition from other shops on its e-commerce platform and favoured its own goods and services, while the former has monopolised social media through its acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp.

More concerningly, the regulator has opened an enquiry into digital pricing discrimination, which has the potential to upend one of the digital economy’s main tenets: how businesses utilise user data to determine personalised prices on the internet.

The lack of pertinent precedents contributes to the regulatory dilemma. No tech firm has experienced a similar destiny since the dissolution of the US telecom giant AT&T forty years ago.

The demise of Bell Labs, a research centre, is cited by some as one of the reasons why the US was left without a major player in telecommunications technology, allowing foreign competitors to emerge, even though others think that the separation increased competition in certain areas of the market that drove the internet explosion of the 1990s.

Another risk is that oligopolies can gradually reorganise, as was the case with AT&T, according to Sagers, “Lax merger enforcement allowed the companies that had been broken up to slowly knit themselves back together into larger and larger companies, until once again just a handful of firms controlled all of the communications.”

Other antitrust tools could include requiring interoperability and data portability: “Both might effectively break the impact of network effects that is cementing the market power of large companies,” says Luise Eisfeld, a digital platform expert and finance professor at HEC Lausanne.

Europe’s predicament

Many critics have accused the EU of using antitrust law as a protectionist instrument because they believe that regulating big tech is as much about competition as it is about competitiveness. The phrase “competitiveness” is used to suggest that we should combat large, non-EU firms in order to permit EU corporations to combine and concentrate, which is extremely risky.

Claire Lavin, a researcher at the antitrust think tank Open Markets Institute, warned that in practice, this approach could inadvertently enable EU-based oligopolies or monopolies to thrive, ultimately harming businesses and consumers. It may also pave the way for the rise of so-called “EU champions,” raising concerns about protectionism disguised as competition policy.

For possible infringement of the EU’s Digital Markets Act (DMA), which attempts to stop IT giants from abusing their dominant position and promoting the growth of innovative businesses, the Commission opened an enquiry against Apple, Meta, and Alphabet this spring.

It identifies “gatekeepers,” or platforms with at least 45 million users in the EU and a turnover of at least €7.5 billion, as possible offenders. The Commission is looking into whether the businesses permit app developers to provide customers options outside of their storefronts. Google is also being criticised for favouring its own services over competitors in its search results, despite having paid €8.25 billion in EU fines in the past ten years.

The company owns several tools, such as the ad management platform Google Ad Manager, the exchange AdX, and the buying platforms Google Ads and DV360. This creates a conflict of interest that can only be resolved by selling these tools, according to the Commission’s claim in a different case that it is using unfair business practices to protect its ad tech business.

Business breakups may potentially disrupt a growing EU tech ecosystem, which the Draghi study identifies as a source of future growth. Oles Andriychuk, a professor at the University of Exeter who specialises in competition law and digital marketplaces, believes that “it could backfire, generating criticism and even cancellation of so many new ideas that get developed on the basis of traditional competition law.”

Facebook’s parent company, Meta, could potentially face fines for purportedly attempting to regulate classified advertising. EU regulators anticipate that the company undercuts competition by connecting Facebook and Marketplace, an e-commerce site.

The company has also come under fire for charging users for ad-free versions of its social networks and using data gathered from third parties to sell consumers advertisements. In addition to its tax issues in Ireland, Apple was hit with its first antitrust fine of around €1.8 billion in March for giving preference to its own music streaming service over rivals.

Vestager led a trust-busting campaign against tech corporations, lobbyists, politicians, and even Eurocrats during his ten years as the EU’s antitrust director. According to Andriychuk, “The European Commission found it increasingly difficult to meet the higher evidentiary standards set by the European Court of Justice in its current composition, but the Commission still prevailed in a number of cases.”

Teresa Ribera, her replacement, has joined a new commission whose goal is to support the establishment of large digital companies in the EU, as outlined in the Draghi report. In competition cycles, industrial policy terminology had a poor reputation for many years.

Andriychuk notes that people have begun to rediscover the connection between industrial policies and competition since its partial restoration. Ribera will also need to strike a balance between competing priorities, though.

China: First major tech killer

The first superpower to use antitrust laws to limit the influence of its IT companies was China. All of this began in late 2020 when Alibaba co-founder Jack Ma made an anti-government speech.

In addition to China’s financial regulator forcing the company to restructure in order to comply with financial regulations and suspending Alibaba’s sister company Ant Group’s initial public offering (IPO), Ma’s rebellious attitude infuriated the authorities to the point that he had to leave the public spotlight.

Wendy Chang, a specialist in Chinese digital policy at the think tank Mercator Institute for China Studies (MERICS), contends that the group’s aggressive foray into finance, which went against the government’s goal to maintain control of the sector, may have been the catalyst for the intense response.

Alibaba was also the subject of an enquiry by China’s competition commission, which fined it a record ¥18.2 billion (£1.96 billion) for abusing its dominance in e-commerce. This was only the start of a larger crackdown.

Chinese authorities forced the nation’s largest tech companies, such as Tencent Holdings, Meituan, the food delivery company, and ByteDance, the owner of TikTok, to alter their monopolistic tactics after they issued guidelines to curb digital monopolies.

Chang claims that the government’s preference for manufacturing investment over services was one factor behind the crackdown. After regulators looked into earlier merger cases and fined Alibaba, Tencent, and ride-hailing behemoth Didi Global for failing to report deals for antitrust reviews, there was a sharp decline in tech mergers and acquisitions.

Another regulatory guideline advocating for a more robust model of development for the digital sector marked the official conclusion of the clampdown. Authorities acknowledged the significance of tech platforms for economic growth even as they upheld their commitment to combat monopolies.

One long-term effect is that the Chinese government now has representation on the boards of significant digital platforms, which allows them to influence their strategy and even obtain their data. Chang asserts that a significant decline in stock market value has already caused considerable harm.

The majority of impacted businesses have not yet recovered, which limits their capacity to develop and expand in industries that the government disapproves of, such as gaming, virtual currencies, and financial services.

Should we dismantle AI giants?

Artificial intelligence has evolved beyond the realm of science fiction since ChatGPT’s debut in 2022. Globally, billions of people are already using generative AI, which creates texts, images, and movies. Microsoft, Amazon, and Google have taken note, purchasing hundreds of AI start-ups and providing cloud services and cash to AI engineers in return for licenses and stock.

Because creating sophisticated AI models requires expensive processing hardware, energy, and data, established tech companies have an advantage over smaller rivals, which raises fears that they may also control this industry.

One example is Microsoft-backed OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT. But, AI is also predicted to upend industries where big tech now controls the majority, like search, where OpenAI is creating SearchGPT, an AI-powered search engine that might challenge Google’s hegemony.

Restrictions on Google’s use of third-party data to train its AI models are among the remedies proposed by the US DoJ in its lawsuit against the company, which raised fears that it would utilise its distinct dominance in important areas to create an AI empire.

Should antitrust action be taken against the emerging AI behemoths before it’s too late? Given the substantial obstacles for new entrants, some believe that is essential.

“The current dynamics of the AI ecosystem give incumbent tech giants like Alphabet, Amazon, and Microsoft the ability and incentive to entrench their power in AI markets and suppress meaningful competition,” says Jack Corrigan, a researcher at Georgetown University’s Centre for Security and Emerging Technology, while adding, “Competition authorities seem to be aware of these changes. They can keep the market for AI products from becoming as stagnant as the markets for other digital technologies by closely watching how these companies act and stepping in as needed.”

Some believe that governments should intervene by providing public resources to reduce the reliance of AI developers on large technology companies. Lavin of the Open Markets Institute says that another way to stop oligopolies from controlling AI is to make the laws that control mergers and other anti-competitive behaviour stricter. This could include looking into breakups.

While regulators globally have ramped up their efforts to curb the power of big tech, the balance between promoting competitiveness and facilitating innovation remains delicate. Antitrust actions, like those in the EU and US, are aimed at preventing monopolies from stifling new competition, but they also risk stifling creativity and technological growth.

The cases against companies like Google, Apple, and Amazon highlight the complexity of regulating industries marked by rapid innovation and network effects. As AI and other emerging technologies grow, regulators face new challenges in ensuring fair competition without hindering the very innovation that drives technological progress.

Moving forward, policymakers must carefully navigate this intricate landscape to create a fair, competitive environment that allows both new and established players to thrive.

The post The big tech crackdown: A threat to innovation? appeared first on International Finance.

According to The Washington Post, the United States Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is reportedly preparing to cancel its $2.4 billion deal with Verizon and shift the work to the SpaceX subsidiary.

While the above development may look a controversial one, given the fact that Elon Musk, the self-styled “reformer” of the American bureaucracy (under the Donald Trump administration), also owns Starlink, thereby potentially raising the “conflict of interest” allegations, this copy will discuss something else (another controversy) related to the Starlink, as the satellite internet constellation has now found itself powering Myanmar-based cyber-criminals, with the latter making billions from scam compounds located in the Southeast Asian country. To make matters worse, these “compounds” have allegedly enslaved tens of thousands of people.

Scam compounds exploit links

In the words of Matt Burgess, a senior writer at WIRED focused on information security, privacy, and data regulation in Europe, “The plea for help arrived last summer. ‘I am in Myanmar and work for a fraud company,’ a Chinese human-trafficking victim wrote in a short email sent from within the Tai Chang scam compound. Like thousands of others in the region, they were promised legitimate work only to find themselves tricked into modern slavery and forced to scam people online for hours every day. Tai Chang, which is located on the Myanmar-Thailand border, has been linked to incidents of torture. ‘I’m not safe, I’m chatting with you secretly,’ they said. Despite the risk, their first request wasn’t to be rescued.”

As per the reports, over 200,000 people in Southeast Asia have been forced to run online scams in recent years, often being enslaved and brutalised, as part of criminal enterprises that have earned billions in stolen funds from these heinous acts. These scams, often known as “Pig Butchering Operations,” have largely been concentrated in Myanmar, Cambodia, and Laos, with China-based crime groups efficiently exploiting instability and poor governance in the Southeast Asian region.

“Though they come at great humanitarian cost, pig butchering scams are undeniably lucrative and, perhaps inevitably, similar operations are now being uncovered on multiple continents and in numerous countries around the world,” WIRED reported in 2024, while adding, “Pig butchering operations that are offshoots of the Southeast Asian activity have emerged in the Middle East, Eastern Europe, Latin America, and West Africa. Many of these expanded operations apparently have links to Chinese-speaking criminals or have evolved in parallel to Chinese Belt and Road Initiative investments, the country’s massive international infrastructure and development initiative.”

In 2023, the FBI had reports of nearly $4 billion in losses from the scams, with some researchers even putting all-time total global losses at $75 billion or more. While Beijing has made a concerted effort in recent months to crack down on pig butchering schemes and human trafficking to scamming centres in the Southeast Asian region, the activity has proliferated around the world nonetheless.

Pig butchering involves building seemingly intimate relationships with victims, following which attacks start by texting potential targets out of the blue and getting them talking. Then, attackers build a rapport and introduce the idea of a special or unique investment opportunity. Finally, victims send funds, typically cryptocurrency, through a malicious platform meant to look like a legitimate money management service, and attackers must launder the money from there.

The entire crime racket operates through careful planning from a large workforce. As per the experts, people from more than 60 countries have been abducted and trafficked to Southeast Asian scamming compounds that typically operate with massive numbers of forced workers. And in recent months, scam centres have been detected around the world as well, in different configurations and sizes, but with the same goal.

Talking about the Tai Chang scam compound, the facility’s internet connection had recently been cut off from Thailand, the person (the Chinese human-trafficking victim as mentioned by Burgess) wrote in the messages to the anti-scam group GASO in June 2024. However, instead of scamming within the compound grinding to a halt, the organised criminals have reportedly found another way to stay online.

And that’s where Starlink is coming into the picture, as the person wrote, “Elon Musk’s Starlink is installed above all the buildings in the campus where we are now. Now the fraud work is running normally. If the fraud network here is down, we can regain our freedom.”

However, the messages from the Chinese human-trafficking victim soon landed on the desk of Erin West, the then-deputy district attorney for Santa Clara County, California. West, a longtime advocate for victims of so-called pig butchering and other types of cryptocurrency scams, wrote to a SpaceX lawyer.
“Starlink connections appeared to be helping criminals at Tai Chang to scam Americans and fuel their internet needs,” West alleged at the end of July 2024. She offered to share more information to help the company in “disrupting the work of bad actors.” However, according to West, SpaceX and Starlink never replied to her communications.

Starlink: Haven for scammers?

As per Burgess, reports of Starlink’s use at Tai Chang are not the work of a one-off criminal. There are multibillion-dollar empires across Southeast Asia that appear to be widely using satellite internet. At least eight scam compounds based around the Myanmar-Thailand border region are using Starlink devices, according to mobile phone connection data.

“Between November 2024 and the start of February, hundreds of mobile phones logged their locations and use of Starlink at known scam compounds more than 40,000 times, according to the mobile phone data, which was collected by an online advertising industry tool,” Burgess mentioned.

The eight compounds, spread around the Myawaddy region of war-torn Myanmar, would likely have installed multiple Starlink devices. As Burgess and WIRED reviewed the photos of Tai Chang, it appeared to show dozens of white Starlink satellite dishes on a single rooftop, while human rights watchdogs and other experts say that Starlink use at the scam compounds has increased since 2024.

“I believe that SpaceX must have the capacity to stop this problem,” says Rangsiman Rome, an opposition member of the House of Representatives in Thailand who chairs a parliamentary committee on national security and border issues.

At the start of February 2025, Rome tagged Elon Musk in a post on X, saying criminals are “exploiting Starlink for massive fraud” at scam compounds in the region. He did not get a reply.

SpaceX can terminate services to users if they participate in “fraudulent” activities or if a system is used in unauthorised locations. It has previously emailed users in locations it doesn’t officially offer services to and threatened to shut down accounts.

“Our own technology is being used against us. Starlink is an American company, and it is the backbone for how these bad actors can access Americans,” said Erin West, who founded the non-profit “Operation Shamrock” to take action against investment scammers.

“If SpaceX obtains knowledge that a Starlink terminal is being used by a sanctioned or unauthorised party, we investigate the claim and take actions to deactivate the terminal if confirmed,” the company said previously. However, on the alleged links with pig butchering scams, the satellite internet provider has decided to remain silent till now.

The KK Park example

Let’s talk about the KK Park Scam Compound to make things clear. In the words of Burgess, “the green, mountainous border separating Myanmar and Thailand runs for 1,500 miles. Around 200 miles of the border follow the Moei River, where dozens of compounds have replaced valley fields over the past five years. Rome, the Thai MP, says officials have identified 75 compounds across Myanmar, Cambodia, and Laos, with 40 of those being in Myanmar’s Myawaddy region.”
“From the outside, the compounds resemble hotels or apartment blocks, but they are surrounded by high fences, watch towers, and armed guards. People have been trafficked from more than 60 countries. Around 120,000 people are likely held in scam compounds across Myanmar, according to one United Nations report from 2023, with another 100,000 captives in Cambodia,” he noted.

Starlink has recently agreed to increase its availability in Cambodia, according to local reports. Within the compounds, victims are typically forced to work day and night to scam hundreds of people at a time. This includes carrying out long-running investment scams that have netted criminals up to $75 billion over the past few years. If the trafficking victims don’t comply, they face torture, with either escape or paying a ransom becoming the only way out.

Stable internet connections are crucial for the operations to be successful, from the initial targeting of potential human trafficking victims with false job postings to daily scamming and ultimately money laundering.

Palm Naripthaphan, an executive adviser at Thailand’s National Broadcasting and Telecommunications Commission (NBTC), said that scam centres along the Myanmar-Thailand border have historically used mobile connections from cell carriers based in either of the two Southeast Asian countries. They can also connect to fibre-optic cables in Thailand or run them across the river Moei. Increasingly, Naripthaphan believes, Starlink has played a role.

“The Musk-owned satellite system is composed of multiple elements. More than 6,000 Starlink satellites orbit Earth and beam down internet connectivity to white, rectangular Starlink dishes (dubbed Dishy McFlatface). Some are portable and easy to set up, and they provide internet connections in areas where there are little or no other options, including war zones such as Ukraine,” Burgess continued.

Starlink is not officially licensed in Myanmar, which has been embroiled in a civil war since the 2021 coup, with the service being reportedly banned by the military junta. The company’s coverage map doesn’t list any availability in the country. But this hasn’t stopped Starlink terminals from working and being frequently used in Myanmar to combat frequent internet shutdowns.

Across eight known scam compound areas, KK Park, Tai Chang, Dongmei, Huanya, UK Compound, Gate 25, Apolo, and Shwe Kokko, mobile phones have logged thousands of occurrences of getting online using Starlink’s networks in recent months, according to data.

“At least 412 devices listed Starlink as their internet provider at the compound locations between November and February, according to an analyst with access to location data from the online advertising industry. In total, 40,800 instances were logged,” the media outlet noted.

Tough task for law enforcers

According to a United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime report published in October 2024, Thai officials seized 78 Starlink receivers that are believed to have been heading for scam compounds in Myanmar. Myanmar’s government also seized other Starlink devices.

At the start of February 2025, Thailand cut internet connections, electricity, and fuel supplies to some areas around the compounds. Thousands have since been rescued by officials in one of the most widespread crackdowns on the compounds so far. However, the results have been mixed.

According to Mechelle B Moore, the CEO of anti-trafficking nonprofit “Global Alms Incorporated,” some shelters are struggling to cope with the number of people being freed. Also, past efforts to disrupt scam operations by shutting off internet connections have not been effective, partly due to Starlink connectivity.

About 7,000 people were rescued from Myanmar-based illegal call centre operations and were waiting to be transferred to Thailand, Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra said on February 18. While the country has started its large-scale crackdown on scam centres operating on the Myanmar border, the road is too long, given the fact that Cambodia and Laos, which also share borders with Thailand, have in recent years become havens for transnational crime syndicates operating online scam operations.

“It’s massive, and there are thousands of people in there that have been brought in, typically through Thailand, so it’s a huge move if they clean the compounds and scams out,” said Jeremy Douglas, from the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC).

Myanmar’s border area, Myawaddy, has emerged as one of the largest single clusters of scam compounds in the region, and possibly the world, said Douglas. And the victims were mostly from Asia, Africa, and the Middle East, being tricked into enslaved work. Scams generated from Myawaddy resulted in financial losses between $18 billion and $37 billion in 2023, as per the United Nations, which also highlighted that at least 120,000 people across Myanmar and another 100,000 in Cambodia may be held in situations where they are forced to execute lucrative online scams.

“Thailand has renewed efforts this year to crack down on the operations after a high-profile kidnapping of a Chinese actor in Myanmar in January. The 22-year-old man, Wang Xing, was abducted after arriving in Thailand for what he believed was a casting call with film producers,” The Guardian reported.

Douglas noted the Myanmar military’s Border Guard Force (BGF), which controls Myawaddy, has been under immense pressure to crack down on the compounds. About 200 Chinese nationals were flown back to China on a China Southern Airlines flight recently, as reported by the Bangkok Post. On the other hand, about 260 people from scam operations were deported from Myanmar in February. The group represented 20 nationalities, including 138 Ethiopians.

Mechelle B Moore said, “We have not heard of any companies shutting down or suspending operations because they don’t have access to the internet. Victims will all confirm that they’re flipped over to Starlink or they use cellular dongles with SIM cards in them. When one doesn’t work, they just flick over to the other. It doesn’t stop operations at all.”

It seems as clear as daylight: Starlink’s “easy-to-access” and cost-friendly satellite internet model has gone terribly against the company, especially in Southeast Asia. Being involved in things like “Pig Butcher Scam” and “Forced Slavery,” even though unknowingly, will likely affect the company’s prospects in this part of the world in the coming days, unless and until the Elon Musk-led venture gets serious on the compliance front.

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