Vodafone Netherlands will kill its 3G network in 2020 to make room for 4G LTE
The sun has set on 2G in the US, Norway killed its FM radio broadcasts... old wireless tech is dying. But Vodafone Netherlands seems to be ahead of schedule – it wants to shut down its 3G network in January 2020.
The reasoning behind this that the country is still way behind on its 4G LTE rollout and Vodafone wants to free up the spectrum used by 3G to boost 4G coverage. But there’s a twist.
Vodafone wants to keep the 2G network as fallback. And this will work only for calling and texting, for some reason 2G data isn’t active in the Netherlands. So when it comes to Internet connectivity it will be LTE or nothing two years from now.
Hit the Source link to visit Vodafone’s test page to verify that your phone is LTE-enabled. It should be, unless it’s quite old (and it will be even older by 2020). Still, it’s worth keeping in mind not to buy 3G-only phones (like a certain Nokia that just upgraded from being 2G-only).
Again, this is Vodafone Netherlands. There’s no word from other branches if they will follow suit.
Reader comments
- Sorcerer
Late response: 2G data is active in the Netherlands on all carriers, so the article isn't entirely accurate. Speeds aren't great of course, it's mainly because of the huge number of M2M devices that's active on 2G/GSM with no 3G/UMTS support. Ce...
- 28 Jul 2018
- mKB
- DDS
I think it's the right way: A 3G device has always 2G so it'll keep working (no need to immediate replacement) 2G only device are most M2M or fixed: they need few bandwidth and are often difficult or expensive to upgrade (stuff like home alarms,...
- 09 Jan 2018
- 3{@
- Anonym
Greatly depends on terrain (and height from sea-level of the tower), but GSM (2G) has its range limited due to the timeslots (something like 72KM in ER GSM -- with tricks maybe over 100KM), while 3G (and 4G) have been show to work over 200KM -- and d...
- 20 Dec 2017
- 60J