This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
We switched off 3G this year in the UK and my brothers phone stopped being able to make calls. He was using a 6 year old high-end Android phone, but it was from just before the cutoff where you could turn on VoLTE (calls over 4G).
Thankfully, I had a spare phone from the next year after that to hand him, and that one could work with some hidden menu (the type you type into your dialer) hacking.
Why couldn't you turn off 3G on that old phone via that same hidden menu? Or how come the phone didn't even recognize that it can fall back to 2G...
~~2G is also gone.~~ Edit: it's not gone just yet. Not sure why the phone didn't try to fall back to 2G.
https://www.ofcom.org.uk/phones-and-broadband/coverage-and-speeds/3g-switch-off/
The old phone was a couple years into 4G existing but before we started to send voice over it.
I assume it just wasn't in the OS-level code. It only went up to Android 11. We could have tried LineageOS but that would have required a bunch of work including wiping the phone.
Either way, we checked and the option just wasn't there.
alt roms often add support for volte if the phone supports 4G, because it's just a software thing
alt roms often add support for volte if the phone supports 4G, because it's just a software thing
Were they / are they on the 3 network?
If so, that's why because 3 has never had a 2G network at all ;)
That must be it!
what benefits does 5g offer over 2g?
[Not Serious] 3 numbers more.
Ah, well, my G goes to 11
Obviously Internet speed and call quality, plus there are many good technical changes under the hood, such as proper isolation of calls etc.
They don’t want to. Stingray devices force a phone to fall back on 2G so they can spy on it.
subsidize 4G and 5G devices and shut off 3G and just leave 2G alone for a while. It's not like it takes up that much bandwidth. A couple of hundred kilohertz is not going to make a difference on 5G.
You can get like 5 or 10 megahertz off of 3G, which actually would be something worth pulling off and moving to 5G. But the couple hundred kilohertz on 2G is just not going to make that much of a difference.
There's a lot of hidden cost associated with supporting legacy features/standards/technology
Do they have different frequencies? Require different antennas?
Are there cost implications for radios / amplifiers? Do ASICs support only newer modes? How much obsoleted / legacy HW is required?
And that's just from a manufacturer standpoint.
Are more licenses required? Or other regulatory impacts?
Yeah, that's a good point.
I think a lot of rural areas in the US still rely on 3G. I've definitely seen my phone switch to it out in the sticks
I also know for a fact some of our systems at work that pump liuqid nitrogen still use 3G modems for communicating data
What carrier is this? I know for a fact that T-Mobile has shut down their 3G network and I thought AT&T and Verizon did as well, but I can't swear to that. I know for a fact that AT&T has already shut down their 2G network though.
Anywhere where a 3G signal would be used, 2G will be used if the 3G is not available.
Gonna be honest, it's been a while since I've been out to the country. I just saw most carriers shut down 3G in 2022. Time flies and all that.
Also now that I think about it, we may have been installing 4G LTE modems on our pumps lately. That customer only buys a few systems a year.
I wonder too, say 3G gets totally shut down in the US. Will new phones still be able to connect to it if I'm traveling outside the US? I was bopping around some small islands in the Pacific last year and was heavily relying on 3G for things like maps.
Yes, as long as the phone physically supports the 3G frequencies, you will be able to connect to it when you leave the US. Even though the carrier is here or not broadcasting it, I do not see why the physical modems would no longer be supporting it. At least for a good while.
Well, they shouldn't turn it off any time soon, just like they don't turn off analog radio. TV is one I can understand where turning off old methods makes sense, because people upgrade their TVs and use IPTV/SatTV/cable TV much more likely anyway.
You update your TV more than your phone? I don't feel that's the regular way of things.
I meant like the elderly might still be using a dumb phone, but not a CRT screen or analog connection.
It’s because they still have human targets out there that are only compatible with 2g. The humans haven’t gotten their 5g implants yet.
