T-Mobile says Apple is to blame for iCloud Private Relay being turned off

T-Mobile says the blame falls on Apple for users who have noticed that iCloud Private Relay stopped working on the carrier's network.

Yesterday, it was reported that T-Mobile customers were finding that iCloud Private Relay did not work on T-Mobile's cellular network. It wasn't just T-Mobile either - customers from Verizon were also reporting the issue. At first, some thought that the carrier was disabling the feature at the network level.

In a statement to 9to5Mac, the company says that the issue actually lies with Apple. According to the company, a bug in iOS 15.2 turns the setting off by default for users - even if they had it turned on before the update.

Overnight our team identified that in the 15.2 iOS release, some device settings default to the feature being toggled off. We have shared this with Apple. This is not specific to T-Mobile. Again though, we have not broadly blocked iCloud Phone Relay.

The company did clarify, however, that using certain features with the carrier like parental controls does require that iCloud Private Relay be turned off in order for T-Mobile's features to work.

Customers who chose plans and features with content filtering (e.g. parent controls) do not have access to the iCloud Private Relay to allow these services to work as designed. All other customers have no restrictions.

iCloud Private Relay launched as a beta with iOS 15 and allows users to browse the web in private without carriers or internet providers having access to who is searching for what.