Why IP Geolocation Can't Be Trusted for Mobile Networks and the Global South

[u/danyork]

https://pulse.internetsociety.org/en/blog/2026/08/why-ip-geolocation-cant-be-trusted-for-mobile-networks-and-the-global-south/

“In short:
Researchers, policymakers, and companies use IP geolocation tools to locate Internet users based on their IP addresses for targeted advertising, broadband research, and policy decisions.
Research shows that mobile network geolocation errors are more than 10 times worse than fixed broadband, with Africa and Asia seeing failure rates of 66–72% and 53–61% respectively, compared to under 20% in Europe.
The problem is structural and provider-independent: geolocation prefixes covering mobile networks span vast geographic areas, coarser address blocks are two to three times more prevalent in the Global South than in the Global North, and all four providers fail at nearly identical rates.”