India’s Next Big Privacy Fight: Always-On Smartphone Location Tracking

India’s fast-growing smartphone market is once again at the center of a fierce debate over how far the state and telecom operators should be allowed to go in the name of security.

Only weeks after public outrage forced New Delhi to withdraw a directive that would have required every new handset to come with the government’s own Sanchar Saathi cyber safety app pre-installed, a fresh proposal has reopened the wounds: mandatory, always-on satellite location tracking on every smartphone sold in the country.

According to reports cited by industry sources, the Indian government is now reviewing a request from major telecom operators to make precise, satellite-based tracking compulsory at the device level. In practice, that would mean phones in India would have to keep assisted GPS (A-GPS) switched on permanently, with no option for users to turn it off, restrict it, or pause it even temporarily. Location access would no longer be a choice buried in settings; it would be hardwired into how the phone operates.

Telecom companies argue that this is not about curiosity or marketing but about crime and national security. During criminal investigations, terror probes, kidnapping cases, or search-and-rescue operations, agencies frequently struggle to obtain accurate real-time location data, they say. Today, operators typically rely on cellular tower information, which can only provide a rough area and is often off by dozens of meters or more. The Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI), representing heavyweights like Reliance Jio and Bharti Airtel, insists that constant A-GPS access would allow far more precise tracking and help security agencies respond faster when lives may be at stake.

Why always-on A-GPS is so controversial

A-GPS works by combining GPS satellite signals with data from nearby mobile towers and Wi-Fi networks, delivering quick and highly accurate location fixes. For everyday users, this is what makes ride-hailing apps, navigation tools, food delivery services, and fitness trackers feel instant and seamless. However, when the same technology is locked permanently in the on position by law, the stakes shift dramatically: every smartphone effectively turns into a live tracking beacon that follows its owner everywhere.

That prospect has alarmed global smartphone makers. Apple, Samsung, and Google have reportedly opposed the proposal, warning Indian officials that forcing device-level, always-on satellite tracking would be unprecedented. The India Cellular & Electronics Association (ICEA), which represents several of these companies, wrote to the government that such mandatory tracking has no precedent anywhere else in the world and could create deep legal and constitutional challenges. If the rule goes through, it would apply across the board, from low-cost Android devices bought in cash to premium flagships like the Apple iPhone 17 Pro Max, generating a continuous, highly detailed trail of user movement data.

Industry pushback: privacy, legality and regulatory overreach

In its confidential submission, ICEA warned that the plan would amount to clear regulatory overreach. India already has mechanisms for lawful interception and data requests, including processes that require agencies to justify why they want access to certain information. Those systems are designed, at least on paper, to balance investigative needs with citizens’ fundamental right to privacy as recognized by the Supreme Court. Forcing hardware makers to build constant location access into every device, critics argue, would tilt that balance decisively toward surveillance, with limited transparency and very few visible safeguards for ordinary users.

There are also serious data security worries. The more granular and continuous the location data, the more valuable and sensitive it becomes. If telecom operators or government departments are required to collect, process, or store this information, any breach or misuse could expose movement histories of millions of people: politicians, journalists, activists, business leaders and regular citizens going about their daily lives. A single compromised database could reveal patterns of visits to hospitals, places of worship, political meetings or personal relationships that individuals never intended to share with anyone.

The silent tracking battle: pop-ups and transparency

The dispute does not end with A-GPS itself. Telecom operators are also unhappy with the pop-up prompts that modern smartphones display whenever a network or app attempts to access the device’s location. These alerts, familiar to most users, are designed to provide a basic layer of transparency by signaling that location data is being requested. For operators, though, they are a problem. COAI has reportedly argued that a surveillance target can easily guess that he or she is being monitored by security agencies when these prompts appear and may then change behavior, move to a different area, or switch devices.

To address that, the industry group has urged the government to tell smartphone manufacturers to remove such alerts when the request for location access originates from a telecom network. In effect, this would allow carriers and, by extension, law enforcement agencies to quietly access location data without generating any visible clues on the user’s screen. ICEA strongly disagrees. In its view, these pop-ups are one of the very few visible safeguards that remind people that their location is not just another anonymous data point. Removing them would mean users have no straightforward way to know when they are being tracked, undermining the principle that privacy should be protected by default and that surveillance, when truly necessary, should be narrow, accountable and transparent.

What happens next for India’s smartphone users?

Reports indicate that India’s home ministry had scheduled a meeting with senior executives from leading smartphone manufacturers to discuss these proposals in detail, although that meeting has since been postponed. The delay does not mean the issue is going away. With India pitching itself as both a global smartphone manufacturing hub and a digital-first economy, any decision on always-on tracking will send a strong signal to investors, civil society and other governments watching from the sidelines.

For now, India stands at a crossroads. One possible path prioritizes maximum investigatory power, building pervasive, largely invisible tracking into the fabric of every phone and every network. The other path emphasizes privacy, user consent and robust guardrails on how both the state and private companies can access and use location data. The choice New Delhi ultimately makes will define whether smartphones in India are remembered primarily as tools of empowerment in a digital society, or as symbols of an era of constant, inescapable surveillance.