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Message-ID: <20220226175941.31F0238291C7@ary.qy> Date: 26 Feb 2022 12:59:40 -0500 From: "John Levine" <johnl@iecc.com> Subject: Re: 3G Shutdown 2022 - a note of sanity from Texas It appears that Marco Moock <mo01@posteo.de> said: >Do they still operate 2G in the US? AT&T turned off 2G in 2017. The other carriers plan to turn it off this year about the same time as they turn off 3G. They are desperate to free up bandwidth for 5G. Here's an odd turnoff story: I have an unlocked Samsung S9 phone I have been using with an AT&T Tracfone SIM. Tracfone was recently sold to Verizon and they are migrating all of their users to VZ SIMs and all of their voice traffic to VoLTE. They sent many warnings that my AT&T SIM would stop working when they turned off 3G, even though it's a 4G phone. They also insisted that my phone wouldn't work on their Verizon 4G network because it doesn't support VoLTE. Whaddaya know, they were right, it didn't work with their VZ SIM. So I switched to Ting, another VZ MVNO, and it works fine and says VoLTE is turned on. I am baffled -- Tracfone has no reason to cripple my phone but for some reason their SIM did just that. The phone was originally from Comcast, another VZ MVNO, and I wonder if VZ has some rule about not poaching their resellers' phones.

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Message-ID: <svepd4$e7q$1@dont-email.me> Date: 26 Feb 2022 21:58:51 -0500 From: "Michael Trew" <michael.trew@att.net> Subject: Re: 3G Shutdown 2022 - a note of sanity from Texas On 2/23/2022 0:37, Marco Moock wrote: > Am Sonntag, 20. Februar 2022, um 14:29:22 Uhr schrieb Bill Horne: > >> Here's a site at the Texas Technology Access Program, which gives a >> more clear explanaiton of 3G's multiple sunset dates. The site >> includes multiple pointers to resources and information, including >> possible work-arounds for those with 3G devices that have WiFi or >> other "bypass" capability. > > Do they still operate 2G in the US? > In Germany they switched off 3G, but 2G is still available, so most old > mobile phone still work, some UMTS USB modems or PCMCIA cards do not > because the don't support 2G. I do not think that Verizon has shut down their 2G/CDMA yet, but I am not sure. I believe the T-Mobile already announced Sprint 2/3G discontinuation. I can verify that T-Mobile is still operating the 2G spectrum, but they have cut it down to the point that it only works on the fringe. I still have a circa 2001 Nokia 3395 mobile phone, 2G only, and I confirmed the other day that it still works when I put my T-Mobile SIM card into it, although coverage is very spotty. T-Mobile announced that they will shut 2G down December of 2022, but they have extended it to an "uncertain" date now; lots of M2M/IoT devices still run on that network, and many came over from AT&T a few years ago when AT&T shut down their 2G GSM network. T-Mobile 3G is slated to go down this summer. A fried of mine has an old 3G only Symbian smart phone, and is holding out until service goes out. It should work on 2G then, but it would not be fun to use mobile data at that bandwidth.

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Message-ID: <svdslv$9ho$1@usenet.csail.mit.edu> Date: 26 Feb 2022 18:48:31 -0000 From: "Garrett Wollman" <wollman@bimajority.org> Subject: Re: 3G Shutdown 2022 - a note of sanity from Texas In article <20220223063739.566b1fc6.mo01@posteo.de>, Marco Moock <mo01@posteo.de> wrote: >Am Sonntag, 20. Februar 2022, um 14:29:22 Uhr schrieb Bill Horne: > >> Here's a site at the Texas Technology Access Program, which gives a >> more clear explanaiton of 3G's multiple sunset dates. The site >> includes multiple pointers to resources and information, including >> possible work-arounds for those with 3G devices that have WiFi or >> other "bypass" capability. > >Do they still operate 2G in the US? No. These were largely the same technologies in the same licensed frequencies -- e.g., for Verizon, "2G" (an industry designation never used in marketing) was IS-95 CDMA, and "3G" (which was used in marketing) was IS-2000 CDMA. For the various ancestors of AT&T, "2G" was largely IS-136 TDMA (so-called "Digital AMPS"), which was phased out in favor of GSM when "3G" was introduced rather than developing yet another protocol for mobile high-speed data. The Telecom Digest Archives have a lot of posts about this from the time it was happening (about 15 years ago if I recall correctly). What is happening now is that the legacy GSM and cdma2000 networks are being turned down so that spectrum can be converted to LTE use. All of the mobile networks decided to build LTE as their 4G product, but they had to acquire new spectrum for this. The number (and revenue) of 3G-only customers is now small enough that the carriers have decided that it's cheaper to drop those legacy customers than it is to acquire additional spectrum to expand their LTE networks. -GAWollman -- Garrett A. Wollman | "Act to avoid constraining the future; if you can, wollman@bimajority.org| act to remove constraint from the future. This is Opinions not shared by| a thing you can do, are able to do, to do together." my employers. | - Graydon Saunders, _A Succession of Bad Days_ (2015)