I'm usually down for most things listed as horror, . but this one read to me as "people looking at their phones, the movie".

I think you are having a "see the forest if not for the trees" moment.

Governments aren't supposed to follow industry practice or business needs when it comes to national security. They need to act to protect their nation more than a company.

regulations requiring some data to be held physically domestically and isolated authentication become their purview when their failure can plunge a country into chaos, which can happen with something as simple as say a transit system not accepting payment.

When IT becomes a national soverienty issue, these kinds of regulations will become absolutely essential.

Because yeah ,, a cloud outage in the US shutting down government services in Europe and elsewhere is a security problem since it could also be done maliciously.

Think of a hypothetical where the alternative systems to GPS (American) didn't exist (e.g. GLONASS and Galileo) and the US decided to shut down positioning service in the EU because (of reasons that aren't important) . It would fuck with air travel, emergency services, people navigating cities, all that. The lack of a domestic or alternative provider would be massively disruptive.

Same with these cloud services ..

What's more likely is they'll consume the companies mm-wave licensed spectrum and add it to their own.

While I'm all for reducing military spending,.

given DOGE prior history, I'm going to bet that these cuts will be more destructive than anything and will actually cost more than the money saved.

Since DOGE cuts without any real analysis, instead cutting based on gut reactions and ideological goals more than actually wanting to ferret out waste.

In the US these systems are a no-brainer. I pay 0.12USD per KW/h vs 0.36USD per kw/h after currency conversion.

At that price, its simply cheaper to heat using other sources.

Sadly the way this may play out is the same as it does anywhere else.

They'll just withdraw the service from the state.

This of course being long after they'd decimated the market for actual taxis.

To answer your question, no the US never ratified that UN convention, and anyway UN conventions have no teeth.

https://normlex.ilo.org/dyn/no...

For your second point, the core issue is that gig workers aren't employees, they're independant contractors.

Uber/Lyft has distorted that definition to the point of parody because the contract in theory only lasts for the duration of a 3 minute car trip .. but here we are.

What might be needed is a second regulation to ensure the money assigned to the subsidy is automatically applied as a discount or as part of the base service fee.

This is the game we all play with carrier subsidized phones, if we upgrade before we need a new device we leave money on the table.

The cost of the subsidy is built into the monthly fee.

If we are all paying the full unsubsidized price of the device than the rate per month should come down accordingly.

Of course US capitalism being what it is, the carrier would likely just keep the extra profit and not reduce prices at all.

Imagine that, a company owned by banks that doesn't have the protections of normal banking or credit cards.

Almost as if it was setup to skirt those protections like the gig economy did with employment protections.

They're still charging $0.06 per minute on the low side in 15 minute increments for calls.

Way way above the cost to provide the service.

As a bit of background, I was a telephone engineer for 20 years and saw the transition from facilities based POTS/TDM service to VOIP. I saw the cost of providing the service go from ~$0.06 to less than a penny. Think of going from row upon row of TDM line cards in cabinets to a pair of 2U chassis for a media gateway.

e.g. When cellcos started charging a flat rate was when the cost to provide an itemized bill became higher than providing the service.

Back to the point, if these predatory companies can't make a profit at 6x cost than they don't deserve to operate at all.
 

SS7 is primarily to do with setting up and tearing down voice telephone calls .. As in like seizing a DS0 on a T1/PRI and shoving enough logic down the wire for the next switch to make its own routing decision. Modern times the DS0 is a SIP/VOIP resource, but the way the digits are analyzed is still pretty much the same.

SMS is part of the conversation, but not enitrely .. that's the diameter end of things and has to do with messages passed over the IMS core.

Just to be clear, the telcos can identify the high volume / likely scammer SMS hosts, we could filter them out without to much trouble, i would just mean somebody taking the legal liability of cutting off legitimate messages in the process. e.g. its a legal barrier, not a technical one.

(I could write a splunk query that would identify the heavy hitters in a few seconds).

I was an SS7 network engineer for 20 years ..

The problem will take much longer to fix than a few federal inquiries because SS7 was built with almost no security in mind.

e.g. in the 1970s, the only organizations that can talk on an SS7 network are other SS7 providers, namely large telcos and some businesses.

The cost of entry was very very high.

Diameter is better as most telcos use point to point tunnels between statically linked points, but its still largely unencrypted and such.

The problem becomes when SIP trunks and Diameter peering come into the picture. There's functionally no barrier to entry and telcos are obliged to interconnect on a non-preferential basis to prevent the fracturing of the telephone system. (e.g. if Verizon decided to not interconnect a competitors customers).

I remember the anime cons back than featuring a "Doom Room", which was usually just a single PC or a couple PCs networked and playing Doom over IPX.

I was living large when I showed up with my 486 laptop and ugly 3com dongle PCMCIA ethernet adapter to play.

Big issue there is that the jobs created in recent years have been entry level and service industry type roles.

Not the kind of positions that will replace the relatively high salaries tech workers have enjoyed.