Mobile operator EE (BT) has announced that they will conduct an initial pilot of their 3G withdrawal scheme in the Cheshire (England) town of Warrington from the week of 17th July 2023. This will be followed by their national programme, which aims to move customers off the old data (mobile broadband) network by early 2024.
Just to recap. The UK government and all major mobile operators have agreed to phase-out existing 2G and 3G signals by 2033 (here), which will free up radio spectrum bands so that they can be used to further improve the network coverage and mobile broadband speeds of more modern 4G and 5G networks. The switch-off will also reduce the operators’ costs and power consumption.
However, 3G services will be the first to go because older 2G signals remain useful as a low-power fallback (they’ll be sticking around for a lot longer) and are still necessary for some rural areas, as well as for particular applications (e.g. many Smart Meters and other Internet of Things (IoT) / M2M services are dependent upon 2G). But most operators expect to have completely phased out 3G by the end of 2024.
According to EE, just 5% of their customers connect via 3G in Warrington, which is a similar level to the national picture. The use of 3G on the EE network has fallen to record low levels across the UK and accounts for less than 0.6% of all downloaded data and just 7% of all voice traffic – a 73% decrease since January 2020.
Customers using older 3G handsets will still be able to make calls and send texts over 2G as normal but will need to use Wi-Fi or move to a 4G or 5G device to access the internet on their mobile phone. Customers can text “Handset” (without speechmarks) to 150 to see if their mobile phone already supports 4G Calling or Wi-Fi Calling and get advice on how to upgrade, if needed.
We should point out that switching off 3G will enable the related spectrum frequency to be re-farmed for use by faster 4G and 5G networks, although this change won’t happen instantly, partly because some sites may require additional work. EE informed ISPreview that they will focus early reuse of it in areas of the greatest need (e.g. sites more congested, or areas at risk of congestion). But in most cases, EE expects that existing 4G services will be enough to support impacted customers.
EE is the second major operator, after Vodafone, to effectively begin the main phase out process of 3G services. By comparison, O2 (VMO2) has yet to reveal their plans and Three UK said they’ll be phasing out 3G service gradually over the next 2 years and switching it off by the end of 2024.