In the Netherlands they announce that the 2G/3G phone signals will soon not be available anymore. So those old flip phones and burners would not be able to text or call because the network is updated?
Please #ELI5
*I asked about this in a local phone store and they told me those old phones can’t be used anymore once they remove 2G/3G from the network to optimise 5G
In: 2
What you have been told is correct, old 2G and 3G phones will not operate once the network gets shut off. Note, you can still buy old style phones that operate on the newer network, but the old phones will just stop functioning.
Note, this has happened before, and it will happen again. Old GSM phones eventually got shut off, the old EDGE network phones also eventually came to an end. One day we will shut off 4g networks, and on that day all the 4g phones will also stop working.
We think of these cell phones as being kind of interchangeable but the truth is that a 3g network is very different than a modern LTE or 5G one. Phones that are able to access both actually have separate hardware to access each network. So if a phone was built to only work on a 3g network, once the 3g network gets shut off the phone literally can’t access any other networks.
The older networks are being shut off because the frequency space that they operate on is going to be repurposed for something else.
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