"Now, the rate of new mobile internet subscriber growth is slowing. From 2015 to 2021, the survey consistently found over 200 million coming online through mobile devices around the world each year. But in the last two years, that number has dropped to 160 million. Rest of World analysis of that data found that a number of developing countries are plateauing in the number of mobile internet subscribers. That suggests that in countries like Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nigeria, and Mexico, the easiest populations to get online have already logged on, and getting the rest of the population on mobile internet will continue to be a challenge. GSMA collects data by surveying a nationally representative sample of people in each country, and then it correlates the results with similar studies.

Max Cuvellier Giacomelli, the head of the Mobile for Development program at GSMA, said that large swaths of the world’s population still don’t have access to mobile internet primarily because of affordability. Although the cost of data has dropped radically in recent years, the International Telecommunication Union, a UN agency focused on information and communications technologies, notes that huge disparities between regions persist. The cost of data in Africa, for example, is more than twice that of the Americas, the second most expensive region."

https://restofworld.org/2024/mobile-internet-users-growth-rate/

#MobileInternet #DigitalDivide #Smartphones #Cellphones

16 places to responsibly dispose of old #electronics in #Philadelphia

When not properly recycled, #Ewaste can leach into the waterways — and we miss a chance to get more use out of precious materials.

Words by McKenzie Morgan
Nov 30, 2024

"For many Philadelphians, old #CellPhones, #laptops and other #electronics gather dust in drawers or boxes in the back of closets.

"When residents finally start to feel fed up with the clutter or during their annual spring cleanings, these devices are sometimes tossed into the trash or blue recycling bins. These forgotten electronics have become a part of a growing citywide e-waste problem.

"Philadelphia creates around 1.5 million tons of residential and commercial waste annually, according to government initiative SmartCityPHL. Electronics and textiles comprise about 10% of the city’s waste stream. The rest is sent to incinerators and landfills, bringing hazardous and resource-rich materials with it.

"But the good news is, there’s something residents can do about it.

"While giving up or not upgrading our devices isn’t always an option, getting them out of our curbside bins and landfills is. The Philadelphia metro region has over a dozen facilities where you can donate and properly recycle your e-waste, keeping them out of landfills and giving them new life.

Here’s a guide to places in the Philadelphia region to responsibly dispose of old electronics."

Read more:
https://technical.ly/civic-news/electronics-recycling-phone-computer-philadelphia-2/

#EWasteRecycling #SmartCityPHL #SolarPunkSunday #ReduceReuseRecycle #RecycleElectronics #RecycleCopper #ElectronicsRecycling

"Cape runs its own mobile core, all of the software necessary to route messages, authenticate users, and basically be a telecom. Ultimately, this gives Cape the control to do more privacy-enhancing things, such as periodically give its phones a new IMEI—a unique identifier for the phone—and new IMSI—a similar identifier but one attached to the SIM card (or eSIM in Cape’s case). The phone can also give itself a new mobile advertising identifier (MAID), which is an identifier advertising ecosystems and apps use to track peoples’ web browsing activity and is sometimes linked to their physical movement data. Cape said the IMEI and MAID rotation is handled by the custom Cape handset, which runs standard up-to-date Android.

Cape lets users create bundles of these identifiers, called “personas,” then cycle through them at different points. This means that during some attacks, a Cape phone may look like a different phone each time. The device can do this in a few ways. In the first, users can set geofences around a particular area, meaning that when they enter that location—such as their home, place of work, or commute—the device automatically switches to a particular IMSI, IMEI, and MAID. Secondly, users can set it to switch between these sets of identifiers after an approximate period of time has passed, between one hour and one day, with an option to add some percentage of variation between each rotation."

https://www.404media.co/i-dont-own-a-cellphone-can-this-privacy-focused-network-change-that/

#CyberSecurity #Mobile #Privacy #Cellphones #MobileSecurity #Cape

This is what we call a systemic, industry fuck-up:
"Unlike 2G and 3G, 4G and 5G are data-only standards and have no built-in calling functionality, let alone one as well standardised as the traditional “circuit-switched” calling from 2G and 3G.
This becomes a problem as to enable calling on 4G and 5G, devices need to have explicit software support, especially so for emergency calls."
#5G #MobilePhones #CellPhones #Australia #Telstra
https://independentaustralia.net/politics/politics-display/australias-3g-shutdown-why-your-4g5g-phone-is-now-blocked,19159