- If you have an old phone, an alarm system or an ankle monitor, your tech could stop working as service providers begin to turn off 3G networks in US, some as early as January 1, 2022
Kami Griffiths has a perfectly fine phone. It’s your standard Samsung Galaxy smartphone with all the important apps, a decent camera and a screen big enough to watch videos. It’s so fine, in fact, she’s had it since 2016 without ever feeling the need to drop hundreds of dollars on an upgrade. Come next year though, Griffiths won’t have a choice. That’s the current deadline for when the only cellular network her phone can use will shut down forever.
All of the major cellphone carriers — AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile — are planning to shut their older 3G networks in 2022. Like millions of people in the United States who use 3G phonesand other 3G devices, she will have to buy a new device if she wants to text, make calls or even reach 911.
When these deadlines do roll around, Griffith’s own phone could be the least of her problems. Griffiths, who is an executive director and co-founder of Community Tech Network — a nonprofit that focuses on digital literacy in San Francisco — is worried that the group’s clients, a mix of mostly older adults and low-income residents, will find themselves either without a working phone, or could struggle to figure out how to use a new device.
“It’s going to be very difficult for them. They’re not going to be at all happy,” said Griffiths, who notes older tech users have a harder time figuring out new devices. “If it works fine, they don’t want to change a thing.”
Why is this happening?
Since 3G’s debut in 2001, more people entered the airwaves using 3G tech than any network before it. The network made cellphones capable of web browsing and video streaming for the first time, though at speeds about 500 times than the current standard cellular network 4G.
Now, after nearly two decades of service, during which it laid the groundwork for 4G and 5G, 3G is preparing to breathe its last.
All major U.S. carriers (T-Mobile, AT&T, and Verizon, as well as Cricket) have announced death dates for 3G support. Though these shutdowns have been repeatedly delayed, with Verizon most recently its plan to shut down the network, it’s clear that 3G’s days are numbered. This month, T-Mobile has begun a piecemeal sunsetting by shutting down service to a host of older phones, some that operate on 3G.
Ending 3G will free up bandwidth for better 4G and 5G service. “Cellphones use radio frequency bandwidth,” explains Seva Epsteyn, a data communications engineer who helped create the community network NYC Mesh. “Carriers pay the FCC to use the bandwidth, which is analogous to a highway: Shutting off 3G is like shutting down its slow lane, making more room for fast lanes.”
But the sunsetting of 3G will also leave those who still depend on the network with phones that are as good as paperweights.
“If you have a 3G phone, the day they cut you off, your phone won’t work anymore. It’s going to die in a night,” says Doug Dawson, president of telecom consulting group CCG. “There’s gonna be people who get stranded because of this.”
According to industry group Global System for Mobile Communications’ most recent report, 9% of U.S. subscribers still used 3G networks in 2019. Some of these subscribers still use 3G by necessity: Dawson says that large swaths of rural America, for instance, have 3G service but not yet 4G or 5G, making locals dependent on the dying network, especially as telecom companies are actively phasing out landlines. Other 3G users belong to religious communities that avoid internet access or are internet-averse flip phone devotees — virtually no widely available 4G and 5G models come without browsers or Wi-Fi connections. Still others use old 3G phones because they cannot afford to buy new ones.
And it’s not just individual smartphone users: Many other devices use the network, too. Rural credit card processing is probably the biggest non-cellphone 3G use, Dawson notes.
Erin Smith, a resident of western Minnesota’s heavily wooded and lake-peppered Otter Tail County, recently received warnings from Verizon that a phone on her plan will soon be booted due to the end of 3G network support. Though 4G is intermittently accessible in her area, she does not want to buy a new phone for each member of her family.
And since internet coverage is poor, having a phone is important: “A lot of people use phones for their internet access,” Smith says. Many Otter Tail locals without internet at home will trek to municipal liquor stores and other public Wi-Fi outlets to get online.
“The phone gods have made their wishes clear.”
While 3G provides a slow but operable web connection for many rural Americans, its slower data speed and lack of automatic broadband offers some removal from the web for those who wish to keep it at arm’s length. “I’ve never seen a 4G phone that doesn’t automatically come with broadband capabilities” says Dawson, adding that “some older 3G phones don’t even have data capabilities.”
While the difference may seem minute to most users, it’s huge for intentional communities that attach significant weight to the nuances of the technology they use.
For some religious groups that discourage internet browsing, saying goodbye to 3G means losing the last network on which phones without the option to connect to wifi are available, which they treasure as these phones allow them to be on the grid but not online.
“We heard a lot of rumors about it — it’s a big issue in the Orthodox community, cause there’s a mindset of avoiding the internet, especially social media, as much as possible,” says 24-year-old Nechama, who is a member of an Orthodox Jewish sect in Connecticut where internet use is stigmatized and who spoke on the condition that only her first name be used. “A lot of us have held onto our 3G phones until now.”