Last November, Nguyen Thi Que’s mobile phone suddenly stopped working as telecom companies in Vietnam permanently shut down the 2G network.
“I thought of buying a new phone, but I don’t have money,” the 73-year-old, who sells iced tea at a bus stop in Hanoi, told Rest of World in late January.
Vietnam’s plan was simple: Offer free 4G feature phones to help low-income 2G consumers adapt to the change. The strategy paid off, reducing the number of 2G subscribers from over 18 million in January 2024 to 143,000 in November the same year. The country earned a spot among a growing list of nations — including Australia, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, the UAE, Brunei, Switzerland, Costa Rica, and Jamaica — that have discontinued 2G technology.
As many as 61 countries, ranging from the U.S. and Brazil to South Africa, India, and China, have either planned or initiated the process to shut down 2G networks, according to data from GSMA Intelligence, the research wing of a telecom industry group. The goal is to enhance 4G and 5G bandwidth by repurposing the existing 2G spectrum, which reduces maintenance costs and drives subscriber growth and revenue. This has raised concerns about wider digital exclusion largely affecting the poor, making the decision to switch off 2G a complicated one.
Hundreds of millions of people globally still rely on 2G phones. Factors such as affordability, lack of digital skills, and poor connectivity have kept basic phones relevant in the smartphone age.
People still have 2G?
We haven’t had 2G for nearly 8 years. 3G was killed late last year.
It’s such a pain, so many devices don’t support 4G, let alone VoLTE.
Surely 2G isn’t that hard to keep running? It has far better range than 4G, meaning fewer towers are needed. Just keep one or two bands around to make voice calls easier.
Here at least it’s more connected devices, like the emergency call option in elevators or cars. I was considering getting a used car made in 2023 with 2G/3G and just happened to learn about the shutdown in time before I sealed the deal.
But the timeline planned here in Sweden is a bit insane: only by 2026 must new car models use 4G/5G. 2027 is when they expect to fully shut down 2G. This makes no sense for devices that have a long life span.
I bought a used car that was made in 2004. It doesn’t even have aux in or traction control, let alone 4g…
We have 2G but not 3G (killed a few years ago). The reasoning behind this is that people with 2G only phones are less likely to use the Internet (also M2M devices) than 3G phones, and 3G only phones were already old when this happened.
There wasn’t much benefit to 3g that 4g didn’t have except from backwards compatibility. 2g has a better range. A 3g phone can still place emergency calls via 2g anyway
Exactly!
Meanwhile, people in the west are hoarding old 3G phones in their bedroom drawers. Come on people! You’re using a 5G phone, but somehow you can’t get rid of the old 4G, 3G and even 2G phones. How about you give them away? It’s not like anyone will pay anything for them anyway.
It’s yet another systemic issue, reflective of wider systemic issues. It’s not helpful to place the blame or demands on individuals.
So, maybe there could be a government program for collecting old electronics and shipping them to places where people would still use them.
You can’t even buy working batteries for a most of the old phones I have in my drawer.
The idea is nice, but such a government program would either end up just shipping tons of broken electronics to third world countries, or spending more money testing old electronics compared to what it would cost to buy new cheap feature phones for people in those third world countries.
Or governement hadn’t been such little incompetent shits the battery dimensions would be standardized and have become commodities. And phones made irreperable would means fines in excess of all profits made on those phones.
Yeah, I guess you’re right. Better just grind them to dust and recycle the metals.
