US mobile proxies: carriers, targeting and exit checks

Originally published on proxymint.

US mobile proxies exit through US carrier networks. How CGNAT and the three national carriers shape them, how precise targeting is, and how to check the exit.

TL;DR

• A US mobile proxy exits from a US carrier network. The address belongs to a mobile carrier's ASN and IP databases label it as a cellular connection in the United States, the address class a phone on 4G or 5G uses.
• Three nationwide carriers carry the market. The FCC names AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon as the nationwide facilities-based providers, and prepaid brands and MVNOs run on their networks.
• Carrier addresses are shared. More than 90% of cellular networks measured ran carrier-grade NAT (Richter et al., IMC 2016), so one public IP fronts many subscribers, and Cloudflare found CGNAT addresses rate limited three times more often (October 2025).
• Region is the reliable level on cellular. MaxMind says mobile geolocation typically resolves to a broad region rather than a city or postal code, so city and ZIP work also sets location inside the app or site.

Key takeaways

• Check the connection type, not the label. Echo the exit, confirm a carrier ASN and a mobile or cellular flag in two databases, and confirm DNS resolves on the proxy side.
• Target the region for state work. Use country for national jobs and region for state campaigns, and pair a city exit with the app's own location setting.
• Match rotation to the flow. Per-request rotation for stateless ad and page checks, a 5 to 60 minute timer for short flows, sticky for a signed-in session that survives an address change.
• Make the client look like a phone in the same place. Set en-US, the IANA time zone of the exit region and a mobile device profile in a fresh browser context per market.
• Send other jobs to the tier built for them. Rotating residential covers US price monitoring, static ISP holds one US identity for weeks, and datacenter carries volume on lenient targets.

Read the full guide on proxymint, with the commands, tables and sources.