Phreeli Launches MVNO That Doesn’t Keep Any Names

A new mobile virtual network operaTor is betting that less of it can be more when it comes to your personal data. Phreeli, built by longtime privacy advocate Nicholas Merrill, allows users to turn on the service with just a ZIP code and pledges not to keep your name, address, or other traditional billing information. The service operates on a network from T-Mobile, but it is built to break the association between a phone number and a live, real-world person.

How Phreeli Works Without Your Name or Billing Details

The Phreeli sign-up flow is bare-bones: Enter a ZIP code for tax calculation and select a plan. That’s it. No name or address is needed; there’s no billing profile you store. The arrangement is allowed in all states under federal telecom rules because prepaid service doesn’t require subscribers to identify themselves, Merrill says.

Payments function through what Phreeli calls Double-Blind Armadillo, a process using zero-knowledge cryptography to confirm that a bill has been paid without revealing who paid it. The company also takes privacy-enhanced cryptocurrencies like Zcash and Monero. Everything is prepaid — that’s by design: Because Phreeli doesn’t keep billing identities, it can’t bill you later.

For those users who want conveniences like account recovery or a physical SIM, Phreeli gives them an option for an email address or shipping address. The company says it only uses these for that purpose, and deletes them. Alternatively, you could activate an eSIM through a privacy-oriented portal (such as via Tor) so that your purchase isn’t tied to your IP address.

A Founder With Deep Experience in Privacy Advocacy

Merrill is a well-known figure for fighting a secret FBI National Security Letter in the mid-2000s, and going on to start the Calyx Institute, a nonprofit focused on privacy tools. Calyx has funded everything from radical projects to the building of privacy-centric Android builds. That pedigree is the basis of Phreeli’s design: Collect only what’s necessary to provide service, keep as little as possible, and quarantine keys to sensitive data, even from the provider itself.

Why Carrier Privacy Needs a Serious Re-evaluation

Mobile carriers have some of the most sensitive metadata in modern life — there are lists of who we called and texted, from whom we received a call or a text, and where we were when it happened. Every year, transparency reports published by leading U.S. telecoms report hundreds of thousands of requests from law enforcement for data. Since the Supreme Court’s Carpenter decision, historical cell-site data typically must receive a warrant — but carriers still hold rich databases that can be acquired through subpoenas and are subject to security breaches and improper use.

The industry’s use of location data has been the subject of repeated scrutiny. Federal regulators have proposed large fines for sharing location data improperly with aggregators, and the trade in mobility signals by data brokers has been the subject of F.T.C. investigations. Against that backdrop, a carrier that holds virtually nothing about you is obviously one counterpoint.

What Phreeli Can and Cannot Hide on the Network

Phreeli shaves off what the MVNO knows about you, but it can’t erase network-level truths. The identity of the device that generated a request, along with towers used and other operational metadata, are still visible to the host network. The same applies to emergency services such as E911, and lawful intercept obligations exist at the network. To prevent that, Phreeli’s role is to make sure that it has much less subscriber information to turn over if forced into doing so.

Anonymity brings trade-offs. Without any customer identity stored, account recovery is restricted to any optional contact details they volunteer. No financing, no family bundles, no postpaid perks are built into the model. To prevent misuse, Phreeli says it’ll also cap particularly high volumes of calls or texts — an anti-spam tactic that codifies the danger of abuse without slipping into full-blown data hoarding.

Notably, this process does not protect you against tracking within apps or the operating system itself. If your phone is logged into multiple services and packed with software from a panoply of SDKs, those can still be used to cobble together profiles based on app activity, advertising IDs and network pings. Phreeli focuses on one piece of the privacy puzzle: the relationship between a carrier and its subscriber.

Who Stands to Benefit From a No-Identity MVNO Model

Journalists, activists and vulnerable communities are obvious use cases, but the appeal is broader. For small businesses that want to keep work lines separate from personal identity; travelers who like the idea of a globally compatible eSIM without exposing their lives to a new carrier; and privacy-conscious consumers who are sick of leaving data trails, there’s potential value in that. The launch was first reported by Wired, reflecting a broader rise of interest from the mainstream in telecom privacy — an issue previously left to a small number of security circles.

What to Watch Next as Privacy-First Carriers Emerge

Regulatory stance is the one to watch. The Federal Communications Commission and state attorneys general have intensified scrutiny of privacy harms in telecom and ad tech. If Phreeli’s model scales, it might pressure bigger carriers and MVNOs to offer tiers that are more privacy-oriented — or at least implement tougher data-minimization policies. Alternatively, success might spur calls for new identity requirements — especially if bad actors push the limits of the system.

For now, Phreeli is a rare experiment in allowing a modern phone line to feel less like being stalked. The question is not whether it can make you invisible — of course it cannot — but whether lowering how much the carrier knows about you becomes the next feature to compete on in mobile service.