Was looking on the Telstra page teaching customers about the benefits of 5G and found this gem.
3G has quietly fucked off here in the the uk, which isn’t really noticeable in large towns or cities, but out in the countryside it’s a right mess. Any kind of hill/lump/undulation/mild topological perturbation between you and the mast, and there’s no signal. If you haven’t downloaded maps for that area then your satnav app stalls or lies, and half the time when you get a little bit of signal, it’s not actually enough to call or use data properly. It’s pretty screwed, and all just so the gov can make money re-licensing that bandwidth for another purpose
Sounds like an issue with not letting those same low frequencies be used for 4G instead. While it is true that 4G signals can’t quite reach as far as 3G on the same frequency, it’s still about 90%.
Technically that may be true, but we live somewhere that looks like the shire. Shorter wavelengths don’t propagate into the nooks and crannies behind the hills, and that’s pretty much what makes up half the uk. That 90% is a theoretical number, and may be true when you take all the moors and downs and that, but practically there’s a huge amount of area that doesn’t have signal that has days before 3G was taken off line
Companies are forcing people to upgrade their phones in the US. I miss 4g, 5g sucks, it’s not as reliable outside the cities and personally I think it’s slower.
If you haven’t downloaded maps for that area then your satnav app stalls or lies
Here that already happens even before 3G is shut down, depending on which telco you’re with. Telstra is really good in remote areas, Optus is pretty good most of the time but is more likely to drop in between towns, and Vodafone can be lacking even within the town in some smaller towns.
hell vodafone can be lacking fucking metro melbourne
IIRC there were still requirements for carriers to develop calling apps for non-VoLTE devices so they still had some kind of option other than being straight carrier blocked which isn’t the case in Aus.
It’s being fucked-off here today: https://www.telstra.com.au/support/mobiles-devices/3g-closure
Gutted. Nice to know you can trust them to keep you informed of big decisions like this ahead of time and not just tell you lies
The higher Gs are complementary techs, not replacements. It’s kind of like saying they’re going to phase out AM radio and you have to upgrade to FM.
My area 3G was shut down a few years ago. My alarm company actually sent a 4G -> 3G bridge so my alarm continued to work.
