I have bad news for anybody still clinging to their flip phones. All of the big cellular carriers have announced plans to end 3G cellular service, and each has a different timeline in mind:

• Verizon previously said they would stop supporting 3G at the end of 2019, but now says it will end service at the end of 2020.
• AT&T has announced the end of 3G to be coming in early 2022.
• Sprint and T-Mobile have not expressed a specific date but are both expected to stop 3G service sometime in 2020 or 2021.

The amount of usage on 3G networks is still significant. GSMA reported that at the end of 2018 that as many as 17% of US cellular customers still made 3G connections, which accounted for as much as 19% of all cellular connections.

The primary reason cited for ending 3G is that the technology is far less efficient than 4G. A 3G connection to a cell site chews up the same amount of frequency resources as a 4G connection yet delivers far less data to customers. The carriers are also anxious to free up mid-range spectrum for upcoming 5G deployment.

Opensignal measures actual speed performance for millions of cellular connections and recently reported the following statistics for the average 3G and 4G download speeds as of July 2019:

The carriers have been hesitating on ending 3G because there are still significant numbers of rural cell sites that still don’t offer 4G. The cellular carriers were counting on funding from the FCC’s Mobility Fund Phase II to upgrade rural cell sites. However, that funding program got derailed and delayed when the FCC found there were massive errors in the data provided for distributing that fund. The big carriers were accused by many of rigging the data in a way to give more funding to themselves instead of to smaller rural cellular providers.

The FCC staff conducted significant testing of the reported speed and coverage data and released a report of their findings in December 2019. The testing showed that the carriers have significantly overreported 4G coverage and speeds across the country. This report is worth reading for anybody that needs to be convinced of the garbage data that has been used for the creation of FCC broadband maps. I wish the FCC Staff would put the same effort into investigating landline broadband data provided to the FCC. The FCC Staff recommended that the agency should release a formal Enforcement Advisory including ‘a detailing of the penalties associated with carrier filings that violate federal law.’

The carriers are also hesitant to end 3G since a lot of customers still use the technology. Opensignal says there are several reasons for the continued use of 3G. First, 12.7% of users of 3G live in rural areas where 3G is the only cellular technology available. Opensignal says that 4.1% of 3G users still own old flip phones that are not capable of receiving 4G. The biggest category of 3G users are customers that own a 4G capable phone but still subscribe to a 3G data plan. AT&T is the largest provider of such plans and has not forced customers to upgrade to 4G plans.

The carriers need to upgrade rural cell sites to 4G before they can be allowed to cut 3G dead. In doing so, they need to migrate customers to 4G data plans and also notify customers who still use 3G-only flip phones that it’s finally time to upgrade.

One aspect of the 3G issue that nobody is talking about is that AT&T says it is using fixed wireless connections to meet its CAF II buildout requirements. Since the CAF II areas include some of the most remote landline customers, it stands to reason that these are the same areas that are likely to still be served with 3G cell towers. AT&T can’t deliver 10/1 Mbps or faster speeds using 3G technology. This makes me wonder what AT&T has been telling the FCC in terms of meeting their CAF II build-out requirements.