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.

The post Starlink at heart of scam empire appeared first on International Finance.

However, the prototype was still clearly a disaster in the Apple boardroom. Not only was the product clunky, but it was also inoperable. Data and applications regularly became corrupted and unusable, the phone would frequently drop calls, and the battery would drain before it was fully charged. Problems seemed to be inexhaustible. Upon concluding the demonstration, Jobs gave a stern look to the approximately twelve individuals present in the room and declared, “A product is not yet available.”

It was a terrifying effect, even more so than one of Steve Jobs’ famous meltdowns. When the Apple chief screamed at his staff, it was scary but familiar. A meeting participant remarked, “It was one of the few times at Apple when I got a chill.”

In just a few months, Apple was scheduled to host its annual Macworld convention, with the iPhone slated to be the star attraction. Upon his return to Apple in 1997, Jobs had utilised the occasion to introduce his most significant products and those who followed Apple were anticipating yet another momentous declaration.

Jobs had previously acknowledged that Leopard, the upcoming release of Apple’s operating system, would be delayed. If the iPhone wasn’t ready in time, Macworld would be a dud, Jobs’ critics would pounce, and Apple’s stock price could suffer.

The question was, what would AT&T (an American multinational telecommunications holding company) think? Steve Jobs had finally worked out a deal for the iPhone’s carrier, the telecom behemoth (then known as Cingular), following a year and a half of closed-door meetings. Jobs had been given unprecedented power by AT&T in exchange for five years of exclusivity, about 10% of iPhone sales in AT&T stores, and a small portion of Apple’s iTunes revenue.

He had persuaded AT&T to invest millions of dollars and thousands of man-hours in order to reimagine the labour-intensive in-store sign-up process and develop a new feature known as visual voicemail. He had also negotiated a special revenue-sharing plan that allowed him to take about $10 off each iPhone user’s AT&T bill each month.

In addition, Apple continued to have total control over the iPhone’s development, production, and promotion. Jobs had achieved the unimaginable: he successfully negotiated a favourable agreement with a major player in the well-established wireless sector. The least he could do at this point was to meet his deadlines.

For the next three months, there were frequently screaming matches in the hallways. Engineers who were exhausted from working through the night often resigned, only to return a few days later. The product manager locked herself in her office after slamming the door so hard that the handle bent.

A few weeks before Macworld, Jobs had a working prototype that he showed the AT&T suits. He first met wireless boss Stan Sigman (CEO of AT&T) in mid-December 2006 at the Four Seasons hotel in Las Vegas. He demonstrated the iPhone’s sharp screen, potent Web browser, and captivating UI. Unusually enthusiastic, Sigman praised the iPhone as “the best device I have ever seen.”

On June 29, 2007, six months after its launch, the iPhone went on sale. Analysts predicted that by the end of 2007, sales would reach approximately three million units, making it the fastest-selling smartphone ever at the time of publication. It’s also possibly Apple’s most lucrative product. With every $399 iPhone sold, the company makes an estimated $80, excluding the $240 it receives from each two-year AT&T contract an iPhone customer signs. In the meantime, the iPhone has tripled AT&T’s data traffic in major cities like New York and San Francisco, and about 40% of iPhone buyers were brand-new customers.

Although the iPhone has been crucial to Apple and AT&T’s success, its true influence has been felt in the way the $11 billion US mobile phone market is structured. For many years, wireless carriers have acted as though manufacturers were subservient, controlling phone production, pricing, and feature availability through access to their networks. The majority of people saw cell phones as disposable, low-cost bait that was heavily subsidised to entice users to use the exclusive services offered by the carriers.

But with the iPhone, carriers started to realise that a well-chosen product, even if it is expensive, can attract consumers and generate income. Nowadays, manufacturers are racing to make phones that consumers will love rather than ones that the carriers will approve of in an attempt to land a deal akin to Apple’s.

According to Piper Jaffray securities analyst Michael Olson, “The iPhone is already changing the way carriers and manufacturers behave.”

Jobs began considering creating a phone in 2002, not long after the first iPod was introduced. It makes sense that customers would prefer to have just one device when they see millions of Americans carrying around multiple phones, BlackBerrys, and now MP3 players. In the future, he also anticipated, cell phones and mobile email clients would continue to add features, posing a threat to the iPod’s hegemony in the music player market. Jobs anticipated having to enter the wireless industry at some point to safeguard his new product line.

However, there were challenges. Data networks were unreliable and unprepared for a fully functional handheld Internet device. The operating system for the iPod was not complex enough to handle advanced networking or graphics. Even a stripped-down version of OS X would be too demanding for a mobile phone chip. This meant that Apple had to develop an entirely new operating system for the iPhone.

Apple would also be up against fierce competition: in 2003, people went crazy for the Palm Treo 600, which combined a PDA, phone, and BlackBerry into one stylish package. That increased the bar for Apple’s engineers but also demonstrated that there was a market for a so-called convergence device.

Then there were the cellular service providers. Jobs was aware that they controlled what was built and how it was built, and that they viewed hardware as little more than a means of gaining access to their networks. Being a notorious control freak himself, Jobs was not going to allow a group of executives, or “orifices” as he would later refer to them, dictate how he should design his phone.

The iPod business owned by Apple was both more significant and more susceptible than before, by 2004. Although the iPod made up 16% of the company’s revenue, its long-term position as the industry’s leading music device appeared to be in jeopardy given the rise of 3G phones, the impending release of Wi-Fi phones, the sharp decline in storage costs, and the proliferation of competing music stores.

Therefore, Jobs was preparing his entry into the mobile phone industry that summer even as he flatly denied he would create an Apple phone. He went to Motorola in an attempt to get around the carriers.

With the release of the immensely popular RAZR by the phone company and Jobs’ familiarity with Ed Zander, Motorola’s CEO at the time, from Zander’s time as an executive at Sun Microsystems, it appeared to be a simple fix. With a deal in place, Motorola and the carrier, Cingular, could work out the intricate details of the hardware, leaving Apple to focus on creating the music software.

Of course, Jobs’ plan was predicated on the assumption that Motorola would create a worthy replacement for the RAZR, but that was soon to be determined. The three businesses fought over almost every detail, including how songs would be stored on the phone, how much music could be played, and even how each company’s name would be shown. There was still another issue: the device itself was unsightly when the prototypes appeared at the end of 2004.

With his trademark panache, Jobs introduced the ROKR in September 2005, calling it “an iPod shuffle on your phone.” However, Jobs probably realised he was dealing with a failure; customers detested it. The ROKR, which could only store 100 songs and was unable to download music directly, soon came to symbolise everything that was wrong with the US wireless industry. It was the result of a tangle of competing interests, with the customer coming last on the list.

Even as the ROKR was going into production, Jobs realised he would have to construct his own mobile device. He met with Cingular in February 2005 to talk about a partnership where Motorola would not be involved. A few Cingular senior executives, including Sigman, were present when Jobs presented his plans in a top-secret meeting held in a hotel in midtown Manhattan.

In December 2006, AT&T acquired Cingular. Sigman continued to serve as the president of Cingular Wireless. Jobs gave Cingular a three-part speech, stating that Apple had the technology to create something “light-years ahead of anything else” that was genuinely revolutionary. Apple was willing to explore an exclusive agreement to close that deal. However, Apple was also ready to become a de facto carrier by purchasing wireless minutes in bulk.

Jobs was justified in his confidence. After nearly a year of developing touchscreen technology for tablet PCs, Apple’s hardware engineers persuaded him that they could create a comparable phone interface. Additionally, with the introduction of the ARM11 chip, mobile processors could now run a device that merged the features of an iPod, a computer, and a phone. Additionally, wireless minutes had dropped to the point where Apple could resell them to customers; Virgin and other companies were already doing this.

The iPhone concept instantly captivated Sigman and his group. The approach taken by Cingular and the other carriers encouraged users to access the Internet more and more through their mobile phones. Price wars were slashing margins, and the voice business was in decline. The iPhone may result in a rise in the number of data users due to its advertised capacity to download media files (music and video) and browse the Internet at Wi-Fi speeds. Furthermore, profit margins were highest in data rather than voice.

Additionally, the Cingular team realised that the wireless business model needed to be altered. Carriers had grown accustomed to considering handsets as useless commodities and their networks as priceless resources. This tactic had worked wonders for them. Carriers facilitated new customer enrolment by offering subsidies for the purchase of inexpensive phones, which in turn led to the signing of long-term contracts that guaranteed a steady stream of revenue.

However, wireless access has evolved from a luxury to a need. The carriers’ biggest problem wasn’t finding new customers; rather, it was stealing existing ones from one another. It wasn’t sufficient to simply entice customers with cheap phones; Sigman and his team aimed to offer essential gadgets exclusive to their network. Who better than Jobs to design one?

Cingular found Apple’s aspirations to be both exciting and unsettling. A loving partnership with the iPod manufacturer would enhance the brand’s appeal. If Jobs was rejected by Cingular, another carrier would undoubtedly sign with him because he was adamant about pitching his idea to anybody who would listen. Sigman knew he would have a difficult time convincing his fellow executives and board members to approve a deal similar to the one Jobs proposed, but no carrier had ever offered anyone the flexibility and control that Jobs wanted.

Sigman was correct. Throughout the more than a year-long negotiation, Sigman and his team would frequently question whether they were giving up too much ground. Jobs met with some Verizon executives at one point, but they quickly declined him. Assigning blame was difficult. Carriers had been charging suppliers and users for using and selling services over their proprietary networks for years.

Cingular ran the risk of making its renowned and costly network into a “dumb pipe,” a mere conduit for content rather than the creator of it, by granting Jobs such extensive control. Sigman’s team placed a straightforward wager: the iPhone would generate a massive increase in data traffic that would more than offset any money it lost on content deals.

Jobs wouldn’t hold off until the details of the agreement were ironed out. He gave his engineers orders to go full steam ahead on the project around Thanksgiving 2005, eight months before a final agreement was signed. If the talks with Cingular were difficult, they were nothing compared to the technical and creative difficulties Apple encountered.

First, there was the matter of which operating system to select. Mobile chips have become more powerful since the original Macintosh OS prototype was developed in 2002, which is when the idea for the Apple phone was first conceived. An iPhone OS should only be a few hundred megabytes, or about a tenth of the size of OS X, so it would need to be completely rewritten and stripped down.

Jobs and his top executives had to decide how to resolve this issue before they could begin designing the iPhone. Although Linux had already been modified for use on mobile devices, engineers gave it serious consideration, but Jobs insisted on using his own software.

They developed a phone prototype that was integrated into an iPod and used the click wheel to dial numbers; however, it was limited to selecting numbers and could not browse the Internet. Therefore, Apple started rewriting OS X for the iPhone in early 2006, right as their year-long effort to modify it to work with Intel chips was coming to an end.

At the very least, all of Apple’s senior executives had heard the discussion regarding the appropriate operating system to use. They were ill-prepared to talk about the complexities of the mobile phone industry, such as radio-frequency radiation, network simulations, and antenna design. Apple invested millions in purchasing and putting together specialised robot-equipped testing rooms to make sure the iPhone’s tiny antenna could perform its function.

Apple constructed human head models, complete with goo to simulate brain density, and measured the radiation output to ensure the iPhone didn’t produce excessive amounts of it. For millions of dollars each, Apple engineers purchased almost a dozen server-sized radio-frequency simulators in order to forecast the iPhone’s network performance.

Jobs learnt while carrying a prototype in his pocket that even Apple’s prior experience creating iPod screens wasn’t helpful in creating the iPhone screen: glass, not the hard plastic used on the iPod, was required for the touchscreen to reduce scratches. An insider projects that Apple invested about $150 million in the iPhone’s development.

Jobs remained as secretive as possible throughout. Inside, the project was referred to as P2, or Purple 2, short for Purple 1 (the name of the abandoned iPod phone). Teams dispersed throughout Apple’s Cupertino, California, campus. Apple executives registered as workers of Infineon, the company that manufactured the phone’s transmitter, whenever they went to Cingular.

The teams responsible for developing the iPhone’s hardware and software were kept apart. The former worked with circuitry that contained fictitious software, while the latter used circuit boards that were housed in wooden boxes. Only about thirty of the most senior project members had seen the iPhone by January 2007, when Jobs unveiled it at Macworld.

The iPhone was so overwhelming it was easy to ignore its imperfections. The initial price of $599 was too high (it has been lowered to $399). The phone is connected to AT&T’s EDGE poky network. Video recording and email searches are not possible for users. Programmes written in Java or Flash cannot be executed by the browser.

Still, it was all insignificant. With the iPhone, several advantages for manufacturers, developers, carriers, and customers were made possible, shattering the wireless industry’s carrier-centric framework. The product is a user-friendly handheld computer. And just like the introduction of the PC, the iPhone is inciting a new wave of innovation that will boost its capabilities even further. Jobs plans to make a developer’s kit available in February so that anybody can create apps for the device.

In the meantime, manufacturers have more negotiating leverage over the carriers they have been working with for many years. Carriers are rushing to find a competitive device and seem willing to give up some authority to get it, having watched AT&T eat away at their customer bases. Users, rather than the usual cabal of complacent juggernauts, will have more influence over what gets built, giving manufacturers more control over what they produce.

As the wireless carriers start to show signs of moving away from their walled-garden strategy of trapping customers, application developers stand to gain more opportunities. Google’s Android operating system, which facilitates the creation of mobile apps by independent developers, has partnered with T-Mobile and Sprint.

In November, Verizon, a carrier known for its stubbornness, announced that it would allow any compatible phone to use its network. A few days later, AT&T made a comparable statement. This will eventually lead to a whole new wireless experience where apps run on any platform and across any network. It will eventually provide some of the Internet’s flexibility and functionality to the wireless world.

The iPhone may seem to have fulfilled the carriers’ worst fears, giving manufacturers, developers, and customers complete control while reducing wireless networks to ineffective conduits. However, carriers’ networks might become more valuable, not less, by encouraging more innovation. Customers will use their devices and networks more frequently as a result of spending more time on them, increasing costs and profits for all parties.

Paul Roth, president of marketing at AT&T, says the company is looking into new services and products that make use of the iPhone’s capabilities, such as mobile banking.

“We have a different perspective on the market,” Roth said.

In other words, the very advancement that wireless carriers have long feared might be just what they require. It was demonstrated to them by Steve Jobs.

The post Jobs’ vision: How the iPhone changed everything appeared first on International Finance.

“Cellphones are a drug, and kids are wired to get addicted,” Idaho’s Boise County Sheriff Deputy Dave Gomez told USA Today over the phone.

Gomez has been a school resource officer for the past 11 years and says he has seen the problems with students and smartphones get worse every year.

In July 2024, the Los Angeles Unified School District Board, overseeing approximately 1,000 schools, approved a resolution to create a policy banning student use of cellphones and social media platforms in public schools. This decision joined a growing trend across American districts, states, and cities. Although the policy is set to be implemented in 2025, it will not take effect until then.

Finding the rationale

Recently, US Surgeon General Dr Vivek Murthy called for warning labels to be added to social media platforms, similar to the health warnings that appear on tobacco and alcohol products.

Jennifer Jolly talked about a case from Wilmington, North Carolina, where a person named Leigh Hicks allowed her daughter to use an iPhone just before the sixth grade. Hicks used Apple’s parental controls and set strict ground rules around her daughter’s iPhone. Still, within a year, her daughter, in the words of Hicks, “Was completely and totally consumed by that smartphone and social media, and it absolutely changed who she was. She got maybe like 23 write-ups in school. She would sneak into my room at night and use my face or my finger to unlock the phone in the middle of the night. It was a horrible experience.”

Hicks had to get rid of the phone. Now, her almost 16-year-old daughter is starting 10th grade with a Lively Jitterbug Flip2 phone, a device marketed mainly to senior citizens for simple calls and texts.

Virginia-based first grade teacher Allison Graves also regretted giving her daughter an older-model iPhone just before the seventh grade. Despite her locking down her daughters’ phones, apart from setting Apple screen time limits and turning on content, privacy and app download restrictions, the child managed to have TikTok on it.

Graves eventually replaced the device with a Bark phone built specifically for kids. The phone’s uniqueness lies in the fact that it can be modified with features as kids mature.

Many schools from Seattle to St. Louis are adopting a no-cellphone policy, and several states are also implementing measures to keep phones out of schools. Even states such as New York and California are considering similar policies. As of August 2024, 11 states either restrict cellphones in schools or have policies that encourage schools to do so from the beginning of the school day until the end.

Nearly three-quarters of high school teachers and one-third of middle school teachers in America are now saying that smartphone distractions are becoming a significant problem in their classrooms, according to a Pew Research Centre survey released in June.

Another study released last fall by Common Sense Media shows that 97% of kids use their phones at school. The average student gets about 60 notifications during school hours in a single day and spends 43 minutes, about the same length as a full class period, on their phone.

Extent of the menace

Nearly three-quarters of US high school teachers say smartphones are a major distraction in the classroom, according to a Pew Research poll conducted in November 2023.

“High school teachers are especially likely to see cellphones as problematic. About seven in 10 (72%) say that students being distracted by cellphones is a major problem in their classroom, compared with 33% of middle school teachers and 6% of elementary school teachers,” the survey reported.

As per the Pew report, high school teachers are especially likely to see cellphones as problematic. About seven-in-ten (72%) say that students being distracted by cellphones is a major problem in their classroom, compared with 33% of middle school teachers and 6% of elementary school teachers.

Overall, 82% of American teachers say their school or district has a cellphone policy of some kind. Middle school teachers (94%) are especially likely to say this, followed by elementary (84%) and high school (71%) teachers.

However, as the study covered the views of a few American teenagers (back in 2023), 95% of the respondents said they have access to a smartphone. Even as some policymakers and teachers see downsides to smartphones, these teenagers tend to view the devices as a more positive than negative thing in their lives overall.

“Seven-in-ten teens ages 13 to 17 say there are generally more benefits than harms to people their age using smartphones, while three-in-ten say the opposite. And 45% of teens say smartphones make it easier for people their age to do well in school, compared with 23% who say they make it harder. Another 30% say smartphones don’t affect teens’ success in school,” the report noted.

Hearing out the experts

Jonathan Haidt, social psychologist and author of “The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness,” said his research has identified a strong link between smartphone use and declining mental health.

“To the teachers and administrators I spoke with, this wasn’t merely a coincidence. They saw clear links between rising phone addiction and declining mental health, to say nothing of declining academic performance,” Haidt mentioned, as he continued, “A common theme in my conversations with them was: We all hate the phones. Keeping students off of them during class was a constant struggle. Getting students’ attention was harder because they seemed permanently distracted and congenitally distractible.”

In February 2024, British communications regulator Ofcom found nine in 10 youngsters in the United Kingdom own a mobile phone by the time they are 11. The regulator further said more should be done by social media companies and caregivers to protect children from harmful online content.

Daniele Harford-Fox, principal of Guernsey’s Ladies College, located in Guernsey, one of the Channel Islands in the English Channel near the French coast, told the BBC, “I absolutely think mobile phones, in under-16s particularly, should be banned in schools. Social media companies are creating algorithms that are keeping us addicted to our phones and we are seeing this dramatic rise in mental health and wellbeing problems in young people. So for me, there is no question that for eight hours of the day at least I can protect children from that exposure and I am going to do it.”

Harford-Fox added that since controls had been put in place at her college, things took a positive turn, with students experiencing “more play and connection” between themselves.

Liz Coffey, executive principal of the Secondary School Partnership in Guernsey, said the island’s four States-funded high schools have enacted a similar policy.

Dr Carmel Corrigan, Jersey’s Children’s Commissioner, however, is among those who think the time for banning smartphone technology has passed.

She said that there’s a “huge amount of positive things” smart technology can be used for, from improving “safety, educating and forming social contacts”.

Does banning smartphones in schools work?

Marilyn Campbell, professor of early childhood and inclusive education in the Faculty of Education at Queensland University of Technology, and Elizabeth Edwards, associate professor in education at the University of Queensland, Australia, carried out a “scoping review” of published and unpublished global evidence for and against banning mobile phones in schools. The findings were published in March 2024.

The research covered 1,317 articles and reports, including dissertations from master’s and PhD students, written between 2007 (when the smartphone was first introduced) and May 2023. The authors also identified 22 studies that examined schools before and after phone bans. These studies covered schools in approximately 12 countries.

From their initial research, Campbell and Edwards said they found only weak evidence for the benefits of banning smartphones in school.

However, Policy Exchange, a British educational think tank, published a study in May 2024, titled “The Case for a Smartphone Ban in Schools,” a study which reportedly showed a clear correlation between an effective phone ban and better school performance.

Opinions on how to address the impact of smartphones and social media vary considerably. Some oppose an outright ban on using smartphones in schools, saying removing critical communication devices from schools will not address the root of the problem.

“I don’t think bans solve the thing that we’re trying to solve, which is trying to get our kids to understand when it’s appropriate to use phones and when it’s not,” Keri Rodrigues, president of the US-based National Parents Union, told Al Jazeera.

However, Daisy Greenwell, co-founder of Smartphone Free Childhood in the United Kingdom, a parent-led organisation that focuses on the responsible use of smartphones with children, said she backs curbs on smartphone use.

“We feel like childhood is being colonised by Big Tech in a way that we’ve not, as a society, spoken about with each other enough,” Greenwell told Al Jazeera, as she added, “Teachers are telling us the biggest problems that they face in school come from the smartphones and the social side and social problems that it causes amongst the pupils.”

While experts and education sector stakeholders argue that banning smartphones in schools can mitigate distractions and enhance focus, the move may also deprive students of valuable learning resources and essential communication tools.

“School’s the same for 120 years, where kids go nine to three, have long holidays, sit at desks and have to regurgitate what the adults tell them to learn, basically all over the world. We’re blaming kids for falling academic standards, we’re blaming the rise in mental ill health, we’re blaming the rise of cyberbullying. Oh, well, it all must be the fault of the mobile phone,” Marilyn Campbell said.

As per the experts, a balanced approach, involving regulated use and clear guidelines, may be the most effective way to harness the benefits of smartphones while minimising their drawbacks. The general recommendation of Campbell and Edwards, who carried out the scoping review in Australia, was to leave it to individual schools to determine smartphone use and to focus on helping children use smartphones positively.

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