James' full write up and guide for checking VoLTE compatibility: docs.google.com/document/d/1QaVDYnZCdI2jKk0-DEZmlKTP33rt1vARd5cKKDA1ObI/edit?usp=sharing

3G is long gone in Germany, but there is no way to shut down 4g. 5g is spotty at best. I only have 5g nsa, so 4g is mandatory. Ironically, 2g can not be shut down, because that is the signal that emergency services and stuff like that uses here.

When my local carrier phased out 3G the coverage near both my house and office got so atrocious I practically could not talk at all. They shrug me off saying "95% coverage means the country not neccessairly where _you_ want it, and also refused to break up the contract due to me not being able to use their services. Eventually I changed carriers after using 2 phones for some time till my contract run out. My current carrier only offers 5G as an upgrade, expensive plan, even if your device supports it. BTW this is no longer planned obsolescence, this is forced obsolescence.

Hugh is right on, the amount of e-waste would be phenomenal. So many people's livelihood depends on cheap, or hand me down phones. It's atrocious the number of used phones that are discarded because they are locked. Just amongst my close friends there are stacks of phones that could be repurposed.

I had no idea this was happening. My carrier (O2) in the UK claim to be shutting down the 3G network in 2025. My phone frequently drops to 3G in the rural area I live, as the 4G signal isn't strong enough. It's a joke, really. They hadn't finished rolling out 3G to the country before 4G turned up, and the same has happened with 5G. What are these companies spending our money on? It sure as hell isn't the expansion of the networks' coverage.

This is going to be genuinely horrific. In the UK 5g is basically non existent, so I hope that the UK doesn't choose to follow in the US's footsteps because I'd say a good 95% of the UK relies on 4g and 3g for everyday tasks, hell the phone I'm using right now does not support 5g.

That VoLTE being whitelist-only feature is worst part, it's like DRM for phone carriers.

This need to be shared, I hope Linus , Louis Rossman and others pick it up if people makes a fuss on twitter

Without 2G GSM (soon) and 3G HSPA service on T-Mobile US, I can no longer use my vintage phones and non-approved 4G LTE phones. So saddened this is happening. Many international, imported smartphones which did not support voLTE on AT&T, T-Mobile, etc worked fine on their legacy networks. This is no longer possible and just shows how restrictive these carriers are.

Another note is a lot of "4G" phones are not true 4G in the real sense. It's more like 3.5G. Which is why a lot of "4G" phones basically stopped functioning well or at all when the 3G network was shut down in the US.

I was working for Telstra as a senior case manager in their complaints department when Telstra began shutting down the old 2G network 8 years ago. Even in 2016, shutting down the old 1990's-era 2G network caused absolute chaos for many people living outside of major metropolitan areas. Entire towns around Australia went to bed one night with four bars of reception and woke up the next morning with a circle with a strike through it as their reception icon on their phone screen, and they couldn't even make emergency calls, as those small rural towns had never been considered worthwhile even for a 3G connection, so many of the phones were only ever accessing the old 2G network from a tower many kilometres from the town... If Telstra thinks that switching off 3G won't surely be any worse than switching off 2G, then they have an absolute fucking nightmare situation coming their way... I mean, holy fuckamoly, I live in downtown Melbourne and I still find my phone having to step back to 3G quite often throughout the day when I'm not in line of sight of a 4G/LTE tower...

Here in Brazil 🇧🇷 we still have 2G and 3G, because in a country the size of a continent, in remote locations it is easy to deal with these old technologies. And in cities, 2G is used in energy meters, utility water meters, and 3G is used in ALL payment stations and payment machines. It is also used for tracking the location of public transport, such as buses. This allows for an uncongested 4G/5G network and also provides access to 2G and 3G for people who have older devices.

First of all When you make a phone call and your network drops to 3G, it doesn't essentially mean that your device doesn't support VoLTE. It could mean that VoLTE is not provisioned to your number. So it would be a good idea to simply call your carrier and ask if VoLTE is enabled and provisioned. Second In our country (and from what I can find online in other countries too) 2G is still used by emergency and government services, so my carrier simply routes all voice traffic for non VoLTE devices trough 2G and notifies the costumer that if he chooses to use his old device he/she may experience quality degradation in their service. Plus 2G coverage is far greater than 3G in our area so more rural areas still have access to voice.

This will impact a lot of fire alarm systems. The one at my workplace had connection trouble last year when 3g was disabled by at&t and all the electricians were swamped with fire alarm support calls and work orders all at once. Most fire alarms are set to auto call via cell service to a firehouse in case of a fire.

4G and 4G+ are LTE and LTE+. Many carriers choose different logos to flash into firmware for these networking icons, but they all mean the same thing. In fact, flashing firmware can change the logo. Your phone almost certainly supports VoLTE. I have phones from 2015 that can use VoLTE. I have successfully made and received calls from a galaxy S7 in 2023 after the shutdown in the US. That being said, i hate the shutdown. I'm in the US, and 2G/3G were shut down quite a while ago on most carriers, and it really sucks. I don't think 3G was ready to go. In rural areas, i get little to no service anymore. before 2020, my carrier still had 2G, and I had service in many rural areas (i travel). After they killed 2G, that service was considerably worse, but i still got service in many rural areas. In 2022, however, 3G was killed and i get little to no service in rural areas. Its quite sad that carriers are willing to kill off a network that people rely on for their daily lives. LTE just doesn't have the range or coverage to replace 2G/3G in rural areas.

I normally don’t comment, but I work retail for a cell company, and the amount of people that have completely lost coverage because of the 3G towers being disabled is really concerning. I’m in a rural area, and I’d say about 2 or 3 customer a day are leaving (over 2 months since the towers were turned off) and even through other providers they have no coverage anymore. I understand 4G and 5G are ‘faster’ but we really rely on the distance that 3G covers

3G shutdown has been awful in the US. I have heard some carriers was sending out free devices that worked on LTE. Still it’s BS that people have to make this change. I can take you to plenty of places around me that had coverage when 3G was available and now has SOS only in those areas or even no service! I wouldn’t have shut it down to at least 2027 when LTE would blanket areas so no one was left in the dark.

What's more dumb is I swear some of these new 4G phones around 2013 had VoLTE but somehow there's nothing about it now 10 years later. Cricket in the US was doing something similar at the start of 2022 and it was VERY dumb. They were artificially blocking phone models from other countries that still had all the same bands required to work on the carrier. AT&T was fine but suddenly on Cricket the list became VERY limited. Some phones will outright be denied if they aren't on the list but have the modern tech to support LTE and 5G.

I figured this was just a US thing (because of course) but I never realized this was happening worldwide. I hate how corporations can just do this without any consequences

You'd be astonished how many hardware like elevators or escalators have 2G modules to raise alarm when the passenger presses the emergency button. That's the reason in the US there's still 2G as ultimate fallback. In Switzerland they shut down 2G and it didn't take long for people to have been trapped in an elevator and couldn't call for help via the emergency button.

What sucks is when your phone works on VoLTE, but they carrier doesn't add it to their whitelist, so you have to get a new phone. Then when you've disposed of the old phone, they decide to add it to the list, proving it was always possible and they're artificially limiting the devices on their network, so BYOD is no longer possible (again). Here in the USA, carriers publish (sadly very short) lists of phones which will be compatible.

I checked with T-Mobile, which is my carrier in here the US. Info they provided is that they shut down the older 2G and 3G networks last year, but will continue to fully support 4G devices into the 2030's. Cutting off 2G and 3G services has not effected data and voice services on our iPhone 11.

I am equally upset by calls to phase out AM band radio or analogue radio/tv. These venerable technologies still serve a useful purpose, especially for rural residents, and the push to digitize everything at high frequency bands seems to be an urbanist obsession to save a few pennies. Manufacturers also support the idea because it means more consumption (and more waste). Zygmunt Bauman was right.

Thank you Hugh for making this video, as someone who has struggled through this confusion in the US through the past few years, I'm really glad someone is calling attention to it. I have no clue why this isn't being talked about more!

I have a refurbished AT&T Verizon Galaxy S9 which comes up with the VoLTE symbol at the top. Even so, the idea that a huge swathe of critical infrastructure for the elderly and disabled, etc, is about to be turned off without so much as an "is this OK?" is extremely disturbing.

I live in Rural NSW so the internet is spotty and there’s completely dead spot with no internet 3G is a necessary out her let alone 4G This is gonna suck. I’m so sick of these mega companies doing this sort of stuff because it slightly cuts into there profits which are already in the billions.

After watching this, it seems as though this is more of an issue in Australia than it is elsewhere. In other countries that are switching off 3G, 2G networks still exist, and whilst these are really slow for data, and low quality for calls, they still work (just about). Australia, having switched off 2G already, is in a similar position to the USA - your phone must support 4G Calling (VoLTE). For Apple phones, this is simple enough, but as you state, Android devices are more fragmented, with some having to be purchased from carriers themselves. I once flashed carrier specific firmware onto my S7 Edge, and once complete, I got VoLTE. The Samsung Galaxy S9+ that I have supports it straight out of the box. So you really do need to check to make sure that your device supports VoLTE - though at least you can sell all of your non-VoLTE devices to countries that still have a 3G or 2G based fallback in place.

I very much appreciate you making a video on this topic. I've been really concerned about the effects of the 3G shutdown would be but didn't know how to put words to it and you have synthesized the general idea very well. Been subscribed since you've had like 30k. Definitely gonna stick around.

Hi Hugh, am from Singapore, a country that is also shutting down 3g at the same time as Australia (July 31st 2024 to be exact). Same issue of a lack of awareness of what it entails here too 😅 This video about the future #VolteApocalypse is exactly what I was looking for. I want to make three additional points as well: 1. The volte problem will also affect foreigners entering into Australia/ any other country without 2g/3g , which are likely to be carrying phones not officially supported in AU (OnePlus, Xiaomi and Sony come into mind). Imagine if a tourist or student cannot make proper phone calls... Even roaming from home countries does not make a difference. 2. Many regions, such as Malaysia, Indonesia, and most of Europe are doing the smarter thing by phasing out 3g and leaving 2g on for maximum range and compatibility, especially in the rural areas. (I simply have no idea why this wasn't implemented in Australia to begin with 😒). This also means more time for the GSMA to get their act together and roll out a universally-compatible volte standard as well. 3. If a telco wants to shut down both 2g and 3g, it should give sufficient buffer time (3 years or more) . NTT Docomo of Japan announced that it would shut down its 3G service in 2026... In 2019. That gives users (especially enterprise ones who are much slower in upgrading devices) SEVEN years to transition, troubleshoot and upgrade. P.S. As Optus is owned by the Singaporean telco Singtel, let me offer you Aussies our sincere apologies... Now I understand why Australian engineers look down on their Singaporean counterparts. 😔

Disgusting. Governments don't bother to monitor and regulate corporations any more. What even is the point of government if they refuse to govern in the best interests of the populace. It's an essential part of their job.

AM radio is starting to go from cars now. Electric cars motors cause interference (like Melbourne Trams) so EVs come with FM and DAB instead.

3G was shut down for Verizon in the US at the end of 2022. It was bad, as a lot of phones in rural areas had much worse service, and anything older than an iPhone 6s stopped working.

Thankyou for the video Hugh, hopefully you bringing awareness will help change things. Let us know if there is anything we can do to help.

3:30 to understand why we shutdown old network, understand that there’s only so much addressable frequencies. I assume like the US, AU will be using these old 800/900mhz frequencies for emergency services radios.

i love your work with reviewing tech and teardowns ect. 100% agree with you about people not being able to check their phone to see if it is 4G compatible but in your case you are more tech savvy than most and im pretty sure you can find the specs of your phone online.

Very important video, thank you, Hugh!

FUN Fact: In india , operators like Airtel,BSNL,ViIndia are still running with 2G networks . Even though they rollout with 5G (I mean we can still make calls with the 3/4/5G simcards when inserting on a 2G devices )

3g is still alive in Latvia and probably will stay alive for a long time. Since most of us are broke as shit - there is a demand for older connection standarts.

It was chaotic back when 'Jio' current biggest network operator in India released 4G but it needed phones to support volte to make calls, however people made the switch because they got plans basically for free the first year. Would be interesting to see how it plays out in the US, what Jio did was give an option to call from their app, for phones that didn't support Volte not the best solution though.

Thank you Hugh for raising awareness about this problem! Here in Cyprus, my mobile carrier seems to still support 2G, which I have verified by forcing my phone to connect to 2G with some settings, and I could still connect to the internet (albeit VERY slowly). My phone supports 5G and VoLTE, so this wouldn't be a problem for me, but I'm still glad that my carrier keeps supporting the old tech, while also getting the new tech (5G) as well and having very good 5G speeds. It's worth mentioning that even on modern devices, 3G and 2G are still useful as fallbacks when you're in a very remote area which barely gets any signal, since 2G and 3G use lower frequencies that can reach longer distances, and could potentially allow you to make a basic phone call or access some info on the internet that could save your life.

In March of 2018 my mom bought the Motorola Moto G5 Plus for AT&T in the US. It used 3G only for calls as Hugh mentioned. I think it was February of 2021 when AT&T started murdering their 3G network. We were staying at her parents house while she had in another a distance 40 minutes away town doing different things. She never called at any point but I could track her phone with a third party app. When she returned she said she wasn’t able to make or receive calls. On our 1.5 hour long drive back home I tried to make calls from her phone and failed. Later that night is when I remembered her phone used 3G to make and receive calls. When I told her she would have to get a different phone, she almost burst into flames from anger. That’s a summary the best I can remember it. A warning 3 months in advance would have been very nice of AT&T.

Discontinuing 3G is not an issue provided they preserve 2g networks, as was done here in India. So all old phones are able to switch to 2G for voice calling. Basically not all phones support VoLTE,in which case it will fallback to 3g or 2g for calls.

Hugh, despite the letter sent to your friend from the government, I haven't been contacted by Vodafone to tell me about the December 15 cutoff. This is very disappointing. Whilst I have recently got a new phone so am not directly affected, I know at least 5 people who will be affected and will have to purchase new phones and other devices. If I hadn't seen this video today, I wouldn't even know to warn them. Disgraceful.

My Mom had to lose her 4G LTE phone when her carrier shut down their 3G network. In the US there's a loophole in the laws which allows carriers to ban any device from VoLTE if it's not 'certified' by the manufacturer for that carrier's VoLTE system. They make this prohibitively expensive for manufacturers to do for phones not branded for that carrier, so none of them do it. There is 0 reason that these phones will not work with VoLTE aside from the carrier actively blocking them. In the US the carriers are required to allow unbranded phones on their network, but they're able to use the VoLTE certification loophole now to effectively block all of them!

This problem exists because Australia's carriers were too lazy to switch to 4G network. Here in India, when 4G standard came, a new carrier came up with plan where they offered free calls, texts and unlimited data initially as they tested and rolled out their network. They only offered 4G and calls were only supported through VoLTE. People went frenzy, they bought new phones with 4G and VoLTE and within about an year every smartphone became 4G and VoLTE. Those who had old 4G phones, they were either updated by manufacturers to implement VoLTE or they had to use a VOIP app by the carrier to do voice calls on non-VoLTE phones. Soon all legacy carries were forced to switch to VoLTE as customers were experiencing better call quality and faster calls on VoLTE compared to their solutions of using old 2G and 3G standards for calls while data on 4G.

It’s a concerning topic, because the 3G and 4G (before VoLTE) is the base of newer networks and many other services around the world like emergency calls. In Mexico we barely talk about the shutdown of 2G and 3G. These networks will be discontinued in 2027 but in the Mexican market you can find a basic cellular with only 2G. It’s a shame because the shutdown affect many people who can’t replace their phone so easily. It’s almost like the cell phone that you buy right now has an expire date. Unfortunately, the cellular carriers doesn’t seem to care the inconveniences of the shutdown for the end user and the real damage of the environment with e waste produced by the disability of these networks in the near future.

While my phone (from 2020) does support VoLTE, it is flaky at best, and my phone often still uses 3G or H for calls. By the end of next year (when my carrier will shut off 3G entirely) my phone will be rendered a paperweight. They're still supposedly keeping 2G around, but in areas that I've visited that used to use 2G, now have no service at all, so that is doubtful. Basically I will be forced to upgrade my phone early because of this (or downgrade back to my old phone, an iPhone 7 Plus, that does support VoLTE), I really don't like the sound of that future, but the government isn't going to step in (at least in the UK), in fact they're supporting shutting off the 3G network entirely.

Interesting this popped up in my feed now - my telco closed 3G service for my area *today* and I thought it might have simply been an outage. Thank you for the detailed explanation :)

I originally thought that the 3G shutdown only affected old phones like Palm Treos and RAZR V3s, but I didn't know 4G relied on it so much...

4G LTE isn't going to be shut down in America anytime soon, at least not in the next 5-10 years. VOLTE has meant that 3G is pretty much dead here in the USA, while it still works, it's extremely rare for your device to move from LTE to HSPA/UMTS and it doesn't do it for phone calls unless roaming or internationally roaming, both of which can be fixed easily by the carrier and their roaming partners via software updates in the network. Roaming agreements aren't solid concrete, they can change dynamically and on demand if the partner networks agree to it. Sounds like Australia has a spectrum limitation crunch and will have to refarm LTE spectrum. Something we figured out years ago.

I work for a telecom here in the USA. I think the point you’re missing is once your doing volte calls, those are calls over a “data network”, like a voip call. This means the carriers only have to transmit a data channel, in reality, it’s several different data channels, but at the end of the day it’s all just data and not the traditional voice transmission on 3G. Now they can do away with that older tech and the older equipment needed for that voice on 3g. As we go forward in generations, 5G to 6G and so on voice will transmit over those on a data channel as well.

Hugh, there's a few other things worth noting. - Vodafone will actually lose access to their 900 Mhz band license in 2024. This will mean they have no licensed low-band spectrum to run a 3G network on. - Optus will still have a license to use 900 Mhz and Telstra will still have the 850 Mhz band. They could still use those bands for 3G. However, they plan to refarm those bands to provide low-band/longer range 5G coverage, similar to what the 700 Mhz band does for 4G networks here in Australia today. - Telstra (not sure about Optus/Voda) does not block handsets from using VoLTE. Rather, it is the handset manufacturers that are not including configs/settings for utilising VoLTE on Telstra/Optus/Vodafone. If the handset is more than a few years old, there's basically zero chance the manufacturer is going to provide a firmware update to include the correct settings for VoLTE.

This is absolutely terrible. 5G in the US is STILL spotty at best and as slow as LTE, and 5G towers are still very dangerous and radioactive. And worst of all, there will be even more manufactured e-waste that could be solved by making the right choice and keeping 4G/3G around...

Here in the U.S. basically, all cellphones made from 2015 onwards had full implementation of LTE. So 99% we're never affected. However, some older cars were due to their infotainment systems not supporting LTE. All 4G in the U.S. today is LTE. This isn't being discontinued. Just 3G was and older non LTE 4G was discontinued.

3G is pretty much dead in my country, leaving only 2G, LTE, and 5G. Problem with VoLTE is that its not enabled by default. You need to ask your carrier to activate it for you.

I live in the uk and have a 17 mile commute each way to work and back, a couple of times a week I talk to a friend on my way home, I used to be on Three (now moved to Smarty - same network but cheaper) and with my old iPhone 8 I could set it to only make calls via 3G, it was great, my call never dropped ever, then I moved to a iPhone 13 Pro, no more setting for calls only on 3G, call quality is now quite poor, after a mile or so into my journey we have massive gaps of no audio or one way only, it will do its best to hold onto 4g but then either finally give up and cut me off or drop to 3G and then all is good, strange though that once on 3G it will not go back to 4g even if the signal is available. If they shut down 3G here in the uk I may as well give up, I’m only going from Tamworth to Coventry, not exactly the middle of nowhere!

Here in Italy some ISPs have already done it in 2018 while some are holding on. I get doing it in big cities that are well covered, but it doesn't make sense up in the mountains or in remote locations, where it's very often the only signal you can get.

The iPhone 5s and lower had this problem of not being able to make calls on Jio network in India since they didn't have 3G/2G services to begin with but they did have an app for such devices (wasn't that good of an app). I don't mind networks shutting older tech if they provide a reliable alternative to work with and at the same time pass on the benefits of their "savings" onto the customers by giving reasonable plans.

T-mobile/Sprint shut down their 3G maybe a year and a half ago. Had to get a new phone back then because voltLTE was a requirement. Current phone is 5G capable but i leave it on 4G to get better batterylife 👀

In south africa one of the carriers dropped 2g, so my mother's dumbphone suddenly stopped receiving and making calls and messages, she had to change networks. I guess network carriers don't mind losing paying customers and as for 3g that's surprising cause a lot of people still use 3g phones.

@Hugh I hope you folks over in Australia can get your government to intervene before it’s too late. We lost a majority of our 3G coverage here in rural Nevada, USA Many people including myself, have been forced to switch to new carriers In order to stay connected. While getting a new phone doesn’t sound that bad it has created an entire generation of mobile devices that cannot be used due to carrier locks. 🔐 Also, love your videos I’m going to have my hand at restoring my iPhone SE and gifting it to my 6yr old son for Christmas

You hit the nail on the head with the AM radio example. Why would we have to suddenly turn all the phones made before 2015 into paperweights

In the US carriers have been giving free phones to those affected, and VoLTE is a standard here so if your phone has VoLTE it'll work, period. How did Australian networks drop the ball so hard on this?

This is precisely why the UK isn't shutting down 2G until the 2030s. 3G is going this year/next, but we're keeping 2G until 2033 to give more time for devices like this to be upgraded.

I have a device from 2013 which doesn't support 4G. The 3G network was shut down here, but I still can use that phone for communication, because it falls back to 2G. I can send SMS, MMS, can make phone calls and I can send text Whatsapp messages. I can't believe, that some phones produced in 2020 don't support VoLTE, because even my iPhone 7 (which came out in 2016) supports VoLTE.

At&t in the US has pretty much shut down unlocked phones too. The phone has to support VOLTE At&t has to support your phone as well. It's so annoying that we can't use unlocked phones anymore, unless your carrier supports your phone.

Ironically enough the carrier I currently have doesn’t even have 5G. So how this would effect my phone and my service overall certainly has me concerned

US customer here who has used USCellular, TMobile, and Verizon. Specifically more recently T-Mobile and Verizon. In the last year I’ve hit 3G,2G, E (Edge), 4G, LTE, 5G, 5G UC and 5G UW. Despite all these shutdowns It always surprises me when I suddenly appear on E or honestly anything below LTE and 4G. It’s even more surprising that across the world we have devices that support LTE but can’t do voice over it. Honestly would be cool to see some sort of converter that could take say a 5G signal and convert it for your phone (say 2 or 3G) to use. Unfortunately, to my knowledge something like that doesn’t exist, and needless to say that would be extremely complex to pull off.

I dont understand why we cannot use our old phones if they are in good shape they are a bunch of crooks, always making us consume and purchase new garbage phones.

If 3G and 4G are being closed, 2G should really be kept as a fallback, like we're doing in Ireland. Cutting all prior to 5G technologies is wreckless and will render so many devices useless.

Damn I was expecting them to phase the out the old standards in at least 5 years time

In the UK they say that 2g and 3g will be phased out eventually but could take between 10 and 30 years but not phasing out 4g

They cancelled my original cell service from 1989, then cancelled the 3g in my car, great, now this…

it will actually suck if they shut down 3g and H+ in france, since all my phones and family's phones will become useless

3G has been dead on all telcos since 2021 here in Malaysia and it was a govt initiative rather than the local telcos decision to make way for more 4G coverage and 5G, the 1st few mnths after the 3G shutdown was truly painful trying to make calls especially since 4G coverage was poor where I live but since then it has been getting better with 4G coverage improving and generally not a lot of ppl here seem to care that 3G is dead. The topic of VoLTE compatible devices is a huge mess here especially if you're on Celcom which only supports very few devices and need to be on Malaysian specific firmware to get VoLTE working.

We've seen a trend toward non carrier locked phones being the only thing consumers will buy (here in australia) I wonder if this is the way to lock back down the carriers you purchase the phones from (VoLTE carrier lock) artificially.

Here in Norway they shut down 3G a few years ago. EDGE/2G and Basic GSM is still in use and there are no plans to shut it down as of now. When it comes to FM radio, they decided to shut all nationwide broadcasting in 2017 in favor of DAB. This was a big mistake and the numbers of listeners went down by +10%. Ironically, Norway still have one Active Middel wave(Mv) broadcasting at Svalbard.

3G phasing out is part of natural technological progression. One cannot simply just shut down 3G data, the shutdown comes from the fact that NR 5G uses some of the same bands as 3G (900mhz for example). If phones made after 2015 do not support VoLTE is strictly because of carrier greed and them refusing to use the stock VoLTE profiles and mandating OEMs to not allow VoLTE on non branded android firmware. Surprisingly enough, this is where the iPhone does well, it supports VoLTE even on carriers without an apple issued carrier bundle down to the iPhone 6.

nah, 4G's gonna live long. 3G is already pretty much dead here in Czech Rep.

Here in Spain Vodafone cuts down 3G without serving VoLTE service in her second brand Lowi. You can write manually the IMS for VoLTE in your device with root.

I live in the Netherlands. 3g had been disabled, but 2g still exists as a backup for old phones.

indonesia dropped 3g last year. although volte has been widely supported by almost every carrier and phone here, there are some occasions where volte can't be relied on. that's where 2g comes. either you use volte to make phone calls, or use 2g. so the death of 3g didn't really impact the communication service or maybe data usage here, at least not that I'm aware of.

Why is that the developed countries have worst, telecom, railways and banking system?

I unknowingly bought an international S20 in the US and the 3g shutdown here killed my ability to make phone calls. S20 is still a great phone I refuse to replace it yet. Ive been using Google Voice to make calls as a work around.

They're going to have to do some big upgrades to cell towers in rural Canada because I see 3G probably more often than I do LTE. And I've never seen 4G as I don't think we ever really got it, though that may just be more of a visual thing rather than a technical thing (like it might be used behind the scenes)

For me, killing 3g signal is like killing their text message and regular call services... Almost every old and modern phones still using 3g for emergency purposes if there is no 4g signal in the area.

Thanks for the heads up mate it is very worrying news and I do have one of those rescue devices I wear for falls at home (or anywhere I suppose) and have a Google 6 Pixel phone which I shall have to research regarding that cut out of the 4G network.

Where I live, they already cut off 3G in 2021 but kept 2G intact, so that older phones or phones without internet connection still work, and most emergency equipment should also still work.

Thanks for bringing this up Hugh! Just did a quick search about my 6+ year old iPhone 7 Plus and still not sure if it will work or not. My phone just says LTE here in the US when away from home and not on Wi-Fi. I'd been considering an upgrade lately just for the iOS availability, since Apple stopped supporting the iPhone 7 Plus.

For the U.S. market viewers, 4G is staying around for a lot more years, no worries. Too many government/state agencies rely on 4G technology and cannot replace certain devices to accommodate (Life Alert for the elderly and disabled being one of the biggest). Only 3G is going, not 4G despite incorrect data being thrown around social media. Therefore, don't just go to the nearest phone store and spend money you don't have to spend to appease carriers profit margins.

Very surprised with this video. In India, Airtel (the top provider) shut down 3G entirely years ago, and all users transitioned to LTE (with VoLTE). The other big provider (Jio) never even launched 3G and went straight to 4G with VoLTE. I would not have imagined that the world is still discussing the impact of 3G shutdown in end-2023.

South Central US here. We're mostly all 4g now because of hurricanes+providers changing things out. I don't even think we have any 3g towers left. The last bit of 3g towers we had got taken down by hurricane Sally and all were replaced with 4/5g towers. It rolled out fairly smoothly here where towers were upgraded normally, and phones got an UOA or new phone for those still running 3g phones. GRANTED we STILL have THOUSANDS of 3g communicators still in the wild and disconnected equipment on the other side.

No there not maybe 3G and they have in the UK but 4G will be around longer than you think. We haven’t hardly got 4G in north wales let alone 5G. They won’t stop 4G for at least another decade.

Vodafone is supposedly also shutting down 3G here in Portugal where i live and its gonna suck pretty hard here too, especially because my S23 Ultra will also cease to function. Its a model from another carrier because most of my family uses said carrier, and i managed to score a better deal on it at launch, but the downside is that i cannot use VoLTE. So, In July 2024, my options are either dont make phone calls, buy a new phone, even though i have a top of the line, perfectly functional one, or switch carriers, lol.

in my country Indonesia, 3G is long gone already, but 2G still active, so any device that need 2G like EDC, non-VoLTE Phone, etc. still can operate. As for carriers that only support 4G, they make their own VOIP app, so that non-VoLTE phones can still make a call.

I think it's more of an Australia problem because in Italy they turned off 3G but left 2G operational for calling but also as an emergency service

Now while I don't disagree what was said in the video, I think it would have been helpful to explain why these shutdowns are happening. Many carriers across the world are shutting down their 3G service in order to refarm the spectrum used to provide 3G services to utilize them for 4G and 5G. This is done to improve capacity on those newer network to deliver faster speeds and overall more capacity to all users. It is also important to mention that iPhone users will be mostly unaffected by this, since every iPhone since the 6 and up has supported VoLTE. iPhones also get a Carrier Bundle for the Carrier currently in use. This is done so more advanced network features, like VoLTE, can work. On Android this is an entirely different story. What is interesting about the situation in Australia, is that 2G was already shutdown a while ago. Here in Europe most carriers left up either 2G or 3G for this exact reason.

Really hoping to see this blatant "upgrade bait" scheme backfire horribly, and invoke some much-needed regulation. I had to panic-buy a new phone a few months back when my (fully VoLTE compatible, and purchased directly from the carrier) model was suddenly dropped from their arbitrary whitelist and rendered useless in the middle of a workday. The scheme worked, and indeed forced me to buy a new device, but I also jumped ship to a different carrier and will never be a customer again, so... good job?

The people over seas thought it would not happen to them now here we are. The worst part is the all seeing eye branch, the FCC won't let you make your own network.

2G is shutting down here in the UK, 3G has nationwide coverage, even in the worst of areas, you still have at minimum 3 bars. 4G is nationwide but slow in certain areas. 5G is city-only and highways.