As Australia's 3G networks are retired, 4G phones without VoLTE and some regional customers are likely to be impacted.
All three major telcos have been warning customers to make sure they upgrade from 3G-only devices, but also to check if their 4G and 5G devices have something called Voice over LTE (VoLTE), so that they don't get caught out when 3G networks shut down.
Telstra and Optus 3G shutdowns
Telstra: June 30, 2024
Other affected carriers using the Telstra network include:
ALDI Mobile
Belong
Boost Mobile
Exetel
Lycamobile
MATE
More
numobile
Superloop
Tangerine
Woolworths Mobile
Optus: September, 2024
Other affected carriers using the Optus network include:
amaysim
Aussie Broadband
Catch Connect
Circles.Life
Coles Mobile
Dodo
iPrimus
Moose Mobile
Southern Phone
SpinTel
Yomojo
The 25 most common devices which may be affected
According to the Australian Mobile Telecommunications Association.
So, they will shut down 3G in areas that already have poor mobile coverage, even with 4G, and that won't get 5G any time soon. This will increase the number of people with poor mobile coverage and no other options. If at least there was some form of commitment to roll out 5G quickly and comprehensively, or some visibility of rollout plans, but there's not even that. So once again, we are at the mercy of the profit-driven service providers, who haven't expanded 5G past the major population centres in the five years since it has become available, and have no clear intentions of doing so.
They are shutting down 3G to reclaim the bandwidth to use for 5G. Spectrum is precious to the carriers and it's not going to sit unused.
They are completely turn off analog, it's all digital from here forward, which saves a lot of bandwidth. It will be worth it. Shutting down 3G will allow them to turn up 5G, it's a necessary step to reach the promises of 5G.
This already happened with the previous generations but there were fewer devices, landlines were still common, and there were tech reasons to upgrade regularly.
Now people are holding onto devices for a decade. It's not a significant number but even 1% in an age where cellphones are often the only form of communication it's a lot of people.
And it's critical that people know this is happening since they will lose the ability to contact emergency services.
Satellite cellular coverage will probably swoop in and make an absolute shitload for one of the telcos.
See Vodafone's plan for NZ, it'll probably end up being the same here. Even just getting country-wide data and SMS would be a hell of an improvement over what's available now.
Are there plans that differenciate between 4g and 5g?
Or do you mean phones, or towers/infrastructure?
Because both the modems in phones and the infrastructure goes down as their production is scaled up. I don't think there's any new mainstream modem chipsets that don't support 5g anymore.
I was talking about plans, so I meant the plans with 5G will usually cost more.
Cheapy plans/providers are usually 4G only. But with the relatively short range for 5g, unless heaps of 5g towers/access points are added, a lot of people won't notice any difference except maybe battery drain.
Maybe the Telcos will add 5g access points to all their customers routers. Maybe the NBN could add it to their modems. There's been talk about adding it to power poles and street lights lol. Of course, anything out of a town or city will be pretty unlikely to get 5g.