A new US wireless carrier called Radiant Mobile is selling a $30-per-month cell plan that uses network-level filters to block pornography, LGBT and trans-related content, and other categories its founders deem incompatible with Christian values, according to MIT Tech Review. Founder Paul Fisher told MIT Tech Review the goal is to build “an environment that is Jesus-centric, that is void of pornography, void of LGBT, void of trans.” The carrier runs as an MVNO on T-Mobile’s network through a manager called CompaxDigital, and T-Mobile told MIT Tech Review it has no direct relationship with Radiant.
What makes this launch different from existing faith-based filtering tools is where the blocking happens. Most Christian porn-blockers, like Covenant Eyes, sit on the device as an app and can be uninstalled or worked around. Radiant pushes the filter down into the network itself, so a blocked page simply won’t load on the phone. Adults can’t switch certain categories back on. That’s a meaningful technical shift, and it’s the part Northeastern computer science professor David Choffnes flagged as genuinely new in the US market.
How the filtering works
- Hard-blocked by default. Pornography is banned at the network level for every user, including adults, with no opt-out.
- Category-based filtering. Allot’s buckets cover violence, self-harm, malware, gaming, and a category called “sects” that includes Satanism-related sites.
- LGBT and trans content. Fisher explicitly named these as categories the carrier wants to keep off its network.
- No app to delete. Because filtering runs in the carrier’s infrastructure, users can’t bypass it the way they would a device-level blocker.
Pricing, distribution, and growth plans
Radiant is priced at $30 a month. Fisher told MIT Tech Review he’s recruited Christian influencers to promote the plan and pitched it to thousands of US churches, with an offer to donate a slice of each congregant’s subscription back to their church. He also wants to expand into other countries with large Christian populations, naming South Korea and Mexico as targets.
Chief operating officer Chris Klimis, a minister in Orlando, framed the product as a response to what he called a pornography crisis inside the church. He cited a survey showing 67% of pastors report a “personal history” with porn use and said he worries about his own six children stumbling onto adult material. “We’ve got to figure out some way to close the door to the digital space,” Klimis told MIT Tech Review.
Why this matters
Network-level blocking isn’t new technology. As Choffnes points out, it’s the same plumbing authoritarian governments use for censorship, and US carriers already use it to kill malware domains and offer optional adult-content filters on kids’ lines. What’s new is a consumer cell plan in the US where the blocks are mandatory and adults can’t turn them off.
That puts Radiant in interesting company alongside age verification laws and the wave of lawsuits accusing social platforms of hooking minors. The shared premise is that the open internet is doing real damage and that softer interventions aren’t working. Radiant’s answer is to hand that decision to the carrier instead of the user.
The obvious caveat is the bluntness of the tool. Domain-category filters routinely overblock, sweeping in legitimate health, news, and community resources alongside the targeted material, and there’s no public detail yet on Radiant’s appeals process or category transparency. T-Mobile also hasn’t said whether the content blocks square with its MVNO policies. Worth watching: whether other MVNOs follow Radiant into ideologically curated wireless, and whether T-Mobile or its peers eventually push back. Full details at MIT Tech Review.