As 3G sunsets, your uncle’s Nokia 3310 faces its first real threat
3G is going away. It’s been going away for the past few years but various carriers will be shutting down three of the Gs, to be replaced with the nine total more Gs (4G-LTE and 5G.) Yes, I did engineer that sentence strangely.
TL;DR – this doesn’t concern you, move along
If you’ve got a cellular home security system, kid/pet tracker, or fleet monitoring trackers, you’ve probably been made aware that there’s not a thing the manufacturers can do to make your 3G equipment work with 4G other than replacing a part or the entire item. This is the case.
Chances are you’re not affected. Your relatives who are perfectly happy with their phones from 2010 however will be in for a rude awakening soon. How soon?
If you’re on Verizon you’re a mere…18 months… what? 18 more months of this? AT&T is expected to pull the plug in Feb of 2022 giving you seven more months with your beloved flip phones and a few more modern ones that don’t support VoLTE in AT&Ts case.
What’s a little concerning here to me is not the consumer side, but a lot of commercial elevators started the move to cellular on 3G seven or so years ago (for the little emergency call boxes,) and now they need updated, during a supply chain disruption, in a pandemic, paid for by commercial real estate firms that might not have seen any income for the previous year after being shuttered. Seriously hoping there’s some sort of patrol for these places, or that the 3G shutdown completely doesn’t impact them.
