I’ve noticed among myself and my friends that the 3G technology doesn’t work as well as it used to, or not at all. When I say not at all, i mean if our phones drop from 4G to 3G there will be little to no service available. Phone isn’t connected to the interwebs.
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Useless can be subjective. I still use iPhone 4s with 3G and my speeds are 6 megabits per second. Some people call that useless but for many people even in the developed world that is very useful.
Whether 3G is being decommissioned or not often depends on the locality. Often regions are designated specific licenses to operate some bands have most use for 3g wheras other bands have more than one mode being used.
For example, in many places in Ohio AT&T is authorized a certain chunk of the 800 MHz spectrum depending on the part of the state. My understanding is the way this is authorized in these parts doesn’t make it always easier for them to light up 4g on 800 MHz so it’s more economical to just keep 3g here consequently 3G is ok in many parts of Ohio.
Some frequencies used for 3G are better able to go over obstructions or go through them. As a result, whether a tower gets turned off or not can make a great deal of influence whether your service goes out. It’s possible your area was never that great for the used 3g frequencies by your carrier in your locale. So when they turned off a single tower then that ruins your service quality
Here in the Philippines 3G signals are still functioning. And I actually prefer and lock my phone in it because it uses less battery compared to 4G.
In recent years, when 3G towers needed to be fixed or maintained, they were updated to 4G/LTE towers. Now, they started taking down 3G towers.
Generally all “G” means is a particular frequency band the phone uses to communicate. Moving to higher G means higher frequency bands which can carry more data per second.
Companies won’t bother with lower G antennas since fewer and fewer phones will be using them
Operators are going to stay with 2G for long-range with low bandwidth and 4-5G for short range with big bandwidth. 3G stands between those, so it loses its usefulness.
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