Telefonica Deutschland, which provides services under the brand name O2, is accelerating the shutdown of its 3G network in various regions of Germany. The company began shutting down its 3G network in individual regions on 1 July, including in numerous areas of Lower Saxony, Bavaria, Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, Brandenburg, Saxony and North Rhine-Westphalia (particularly the Ruhr region). The process has already been implemented for a third of the approximately 16,000 3G sites nationwide, in order to be able to use the freed-up frequencies for higher speed 4G services. Instead of the originally planned implementation by the end of the year, Telefonica will now convert the majority of 3G sites by mid-September, including on the coast of the North Sea and Baltic Sea, in parts of Saxony-Anhalt, Thuringia, Baden-Wurttemberg, Brandenburg and North Rhine-Westphalia. The firm will carry out the last large-scale shutdowns by mid-November, mainly affecting regions in Rhineland-Palatinate and Hesse, with the last individual sites converted by the end of the year.
‘With the complete switch from 3G to 4G, we are setting the course for an even more powerful O2 network as well as a significantly better network experience for our customers,’ said Mallik Rao, CTIO of Telefonica Deutschland, adding: ‘4G has long been the backbone of digital connectivity. We provide over 99% of the population with 4G and are consistently expanding further. In doing so, we are focusing in parallel on our 5G rollout to ignite the digitalisation turbo in the country. We are making 5G available to more and more customers in all regions and offering them two high speed standards for mobile data usage with 4G and 5G.’
Source: https://www.commsupdate.com/articles/2021/08/27/telefonica-accelerates-3g-switch-off-in-germany/