UK to Shut Down 2G and 3G Networks by 2033
The United Kingdom will phase out and turn off its 2G and 3G networks by 2033, the British government today announced (via TechRadar).
BT already committed to ending its 3G service by 2023, but now all major carriers in the UK are in agreement to retire 2G and 3G over the next decade. The networks are due to be switched off as part of plans to accelerate the roll out of 5G across the country. The UK government added that the move also paves the way for future 6G services.
While the number of people reliant on 2G and 3G networks is relatively low, retiring them will allow operators to reclaim spectrum to be used in 4G and 5G networks, as well as save money being spent on powering and maintaining inefficient legacy equipment. 2G may remain in use for longer than 3G because it offers wide coverage and comparatively low power requirements which make it ideal for some IoT deployments.
In the United States, carriers have begun a similar process, with Verizon planning to shut down its 3G network on December 31, 2022.
While the original iPhone from 2007 supported 2G networks, the iPhone did not support 3G until the device's second generation. Such was the importance of 3G connectivity to the second-generation iPhone that it was called the "iPhone 3G." The iPhone did not get 4G until the launch of the iPhone 5 in 2012, and the drive toward 5G across the industry did not gather pace until the launch of the iPhone 12 lineup last year.
Related Stories
T-Mobile today announced that its high-speed "Ultra Capacity 5G" is now available to 200 million people across the United States, with the carrier hitting the milestone weeks ahead of schedule.
Ultra Capacity 5G is T-Mobile's higher-speed 5G network that's faster than the Extended Range 5G network that covers 308 million T-Mobile customers. While Extended Range 5G offers LTE-like speeds,...
With its mid-band 5G network that's widely available, T-Mobile has earned the title of fastest U.S. mobile network in 2021, according to testing conducted by PCMag.
Each year, PCMag sends drivers to traverse thousands of miles of the United States. This year, drivers traveled over 10,000 miles and surveyed network speeds in 30 major metro areas and six rural regions to find the fastest...
Verizon today announced plans to expand its 5G Ultra Wideband technology to more than 100 million people across 1,700 cities in the United States, offering 5G speeds that are up to 10x faster than 4G LTE speeds and that can hit up to one gigabit per second.
According to Verizon, "nearly one in three Americans" will be living in areas where faster 5G speeds are available, but while the...
The iPhone 14 could offer better battery life and feature Wi-Fi 6E connectivity thanks to a new 5G chip, supply chain sources claim.
Taiwan's Economic Daily News reports that TSMC has obtained all of Apple's orders for its 5G radio frequency (RF) chips for the iPhone 14 lineup, taking over from Samsung. The chips, likely related to Apple's selection of Qualcomm's Snapdragon X65 modem, are...
London Underground passengers will be able to get mobile coverage across the rail network by the end of 2024, it has been announced.
In a press release, Transport for London (TfL) said the capital's Oxford Circus, Tottenham Court Road and Bank stations would be among the first fully connected stations by the end of the year, followed by Tottenham Court Road, Euston, and Camden Town by the...
Verizon is planning to shut down its 3G network at the end of 2022, effectively ending 3G support, the company announced today. Verizon has pushed back the sunsetting of its 3G network several times now, but it sounds like a concrete end date has finally been established.
We will turn off the last of the 3G CDMA network on December 31, 2022, months after our competitors have shut off their...
Throwboy, known for its range of pillows crafted to look like classic Apple devices, today announced its Iconic Pillow Collection 2, a new series of pillow designs.
Available on Kickstarter, the Iconic Collection 2 features five new pillows modeled after Apple devices that include the 1983 Apple Lisa, 1999 iBook G3, 2000 Power Mac G4 Cube, 2002 iMac G4, and 2003 Power Mac G5.
Throwboy...
Qualcomm has unveiled its new 5G Snapdragon X70 modem, which is likely to be the last Qualcomm modem to be used by Apple in its iPhones before it switches to in-house custom-designed chips.
Qualcomm says its latest 5G modem for smartphones includes "the world's first 5G AI processor integrated in a 5G Modem-RF System," which is supposed to increase the average download and uplink speeds on...
Popular Stories
The redesigned MacBook Air with the all-new M2 Apple silicon chip will be available for customers starting Friday, July 15, MacRumors has learned from a retail source. The new MacBook Air was announced and previewed during WWDC earlier this month, with Apple stating availability will begin in July. The MacBook Air features a redesigned body that is thinner and lighter than the previous...
Apple today began selling refurbished Mac Studio models for the first time in the United States, Canada, and select European countries, such as Belgium, Germany, Ireland, Spain, Switzerland, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom.
In the United States, two refurbished Mac Studio configurations are currently available, including one with the M1 Max chip (10-core CPU and 24-core GPU) for...
The M2 MacBook Pro has started making its way into customers' hands and we're learning more about how it performs in a variety of situations, but all eyes are really on the upcoming M2 MacBook Air which has seen a complete redesign and should be arriving in a couple of weeks.
Other top stories this week included a host of product rumors including additional M2 and even M3 Macs, an updated...
Fifteen years ago to this day, the iPhone, the revolutionary device presented to the world by the late Steve Jobs, officially went on sale.
The first iPhone was announced by Steve Jobs on January 9, 2007, and went on sale on June 29, 2007. "An iPod, a phone, an internet mobile communicator... these are not three separate devices," Jobs famously said. "Today, Apple is going to reinvent the...
There appears to be a serious bug in macOS High Sierra that enables the root superuser on a Mac with a blank password and no security check. The bug, discovered by developer Lemi Ergin, lets anyone log into an admin account using the username "root" with no password. This works when attempting to access an administrator's account on an unlocked Mac, and it also provides access at the login...
Top Rated Comments
Way ahead of its time. Anyone remembers this.
There are millions of devices deployed in both commercial and consumer markets that still rely on the networks, that being just one example. Shutting them down without warning would have serious knock-on effects.
Have to manually switch over sometimes, also 4G seems to be affected by the wind more than 3G, so areas where 4G is okay becomes unusable but 3G still gave me a connection.