Overview
- India’s IT and home ministries are reviewing a telecom proposal to mandate permanent satellite-assisted location tracking on smartphones, with no implementation timeline announced.
- The industry plan from COAI would require always-on A-GPS, prevent users from disabling location services, and suppress pop-up alerts when carriers seek location data.
- Apple, Google and Samsung are privately opposing the measure through the ICEA, calling it unprecedented regulatory overreach and a threat to user control.
- COAI argues tower-based triangulation is too imprecise for lawful investigations and says meter-level coordinates are needed for compliance with legal requests.
- The review follows the government’s reversal of a directive to preload the Sanchar Saathi app, as political figures and many users criticize the new tracking plan on social media.