It’s the end of the road for 3G mobile services in the United States, with Verizon closing down the old network on its customers’ handsets.
AT&T discontinued 3G service in February of the previous year, and T-Mobile began decommissioning aging networks in March.
According to The Verge, Verizon has mailed consumers new LTE-capable phones as well as letters clarifying what is about to happen.
Verizon has reportedly notified customers using 3G phones that their “lines will be suspended starting the day before their December billing cycle begins”.
They will be able to use 3G phones just for 911 and Verizon customer service after the deadline.
3G is still available in a number of countries
Orange aims to phase down its 2G and 3G networks in Europe by 2030, according to Fierce Wireless. In France, 2G will be phased out first, by the end of 2025, followed by 3G by the end of 2028.
The first 3G phones appeared in the early 2000s, but the network really came into its own in the United States with the rise of the smartphone.
In India, where 5G services have been deployed, 4G now accounts for over 99 percent of the data traffic consumed in the country.
According to Nokia’s ‘Mobile Broadband India Traffic Index,’ the arrival of low-cost 4G handsets gave the necessary headroom for data growth, with a considerable proportion of 2G/3G subscribers potentially moving to a 4G smartphone.
As people began to purchase phones such as the iPhone or HTC Dream (aka the T-Mobile G1), the advantages of having a fast (for the time) internet connection became clear. Web browsing on the go was no longer a niche activity for people with specific business phones, but something that an increasing number of people did on a daily basis, while mobile access to images and music changed the way we interact with media.