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It’s sad when people like this throw a temper tantrum over something that might actually benefit them. Is it wisdom or is it just being too stubborn for your own good?
He's just a firm, firm believer in the "If it works, no need to fix it" ethos. To his credit, that philosophy works more often than not. There's nothing he needs that can't be done on that Blackberry. It lacks modern apps, but any app he wants is on his tablet, and everything else is on his laptop. A modern phone really offers him nothing but modernity. The internet was a necessary upgrade since two of my nieces live with them now. Too many devices in that home for slow as molasses internet.

I'm fairly certain Verizon (18yr customer) is going to offer him another free phone and I'll convince him to take them up on their offer.
 
We're incredibly lucky to have gigabit service here via Comcast if you're lucky enough to live on a street that has it. Starlink can't match the speeds or latency.
Starlink has 20ms latency and speeds of 300Mbps. Gigabit coming, depending on how rural you are. If you are semi-rural near a large city, gigabit will be unlikely.

Of course, if you are doing cable tv, that is another issue.
 
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Starlink has 20ms latency and speeds of 300Mbps. Gigabit coming, depending on how rural you are. If you are semi-rural near a large city, gigabit will be unlikely.

Of course, if you are doing cable tv, that is another issue.

Nope, internet only. Starlink will be an option in the future as it improves. Our experience with Comcast has been very positive. I've been paying $99 a year for 7 years without any increases and we're now at gigabit speeds with no downtime. I own my own Docsys 3.1 modem and a Unifi system with a rack and an array of long rage POE access points so I can still get internet down at our dock and half way across my lake so I'm pretty happy with the setup.

I think star link will become a reality eventually, I'm watching closely.
 
OK, so I'm on Verizon, and I was out in a small town last week and in a spot where there was crappy cell service and my phone's network indicator icon thing said 3G instead of LTE. Would I just have NO service at all in that spot after this 3G shutoff thing?
 
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OK, so I'm on Verizon, and I was out in a small town last week and in a spot where there was crappy cell service and my phone's network indicator icon thing said 3G instead of LTE. Would I just have NO service at all in that spot after this 3G shutoff thing?
No. What happens is Verizon is going to replace 3G with LTE on those same towers, so you will go from having 3G coverage to LTE coverage. In some cases they might even use the same frequencies that were just freed up.
 
There are still a lot of places (in the middle of nowhere) where I still rely on 3G while traveling. Hopefully they can spend some money on improving 4G coverage instead of blowing it all on 5G.

Wondering the same. Would this also mean EDGE support will go away as well? Or has it already ? Haven’t seen that icon for awhile. But I do get 3G while traveling.
 
Sucks because a lot of cars, even those sold 2-3 years ago still had 3G for their emergency service system and other systems.

with no way to upgrade, those services in 3G cars will be worthless.
 
So I wonder if there's any hope of areas like this huge swath of eastern West Virginia ever getting upgraded. I haven't passed through this area in a few years, but last time I was there, my Verizon iPhone was roaming on US Cellular 1xRTT, which I assume has since been shut down. As I recall, data was so slow as to be unusual (think original iPhone speeds) but at least I could make and receive phone calls just fine. I realize it's a sparsely populated region, but an ever increasing number of people from larger surrounding cities like to vacation there. It's a two hour drive from DC, not the desert in the middle of Nevada. It would be nice not to have to switch providers for the few weeks a year one might spend in this region.

JgDrKaO.png
 
They’re shutting down the 3G network to refarm it into LTE. They have already said they intend to have the entire 3G footprint covered with LTE before the shut down.
So what does this mean for hotspots? Isn’t it once you run out of your 2GB or whatever you sign up for, that it goes down to the slower 3G speeds? I’m on T-Mobile so maybe that’s just how their hotspots work.
 
So I wonder if there's any hope of areas like this huge swath of eastern West Virginia ever getting upgraded. I haven't passed through this area in a few years, but last time I was there, my Verizon iPhone was roaming on US Cellular 1xRTT, which I assume has since been shut down. As I recall, data was so slow as to be unusual (think original iPhone speeds) but at least I could make and receive phone calls just fine. I realize it's a sparsely populated region, but an ever increasing number of people from larger surrounding cities like to vacation there. It's a two hour drive from DC, not the desert in the middle of Nevada. It would be nice not to have to switch providers for the few weeks a year one might spend in this region.

JgDrKaO.png
Without being able to zoom in, my guess is never, or at least not until something much larger happens.

 
So I wonder if there's any hope of areas like this huge swath of eastern West Virginia ever getting upgraded. I haven't passed through this area in a few years, but last time I was there, my Verizon iPhone was roaming on US Cellular 1xRTT, which I assume has since been shut down. As I recall, data was so slow as to be unusual (think original iPhone speeds) but at least I could make and receive phone calls just fine. I realize it's a sparsely populated region, but an ever increasing number of people from larger surrounding cities like to vacation there. It's a two hour drive from DC, not the desert in the middle of Nevada. It would be nice not to have to switch providers for the few weeks a year one might spend in this region.

JgDrKaO.png
That huge swath is an interesting story! It is actually the result of a very early CDMA network operated by Shenandoah Telecom, aka Shentel. They were an early Sprint PCS/Nextel/iDEN (yeah… yup… all those old garbage devices, that should give you an idea of who we're discussing) network. In those parts it is called ****-tel. It was the Boost before there was Boost. And due to how wireless infrastructure got built out, they basically own all the tower space, and lord over it like the bad guy in 'Roadhouse' ran the town.

Hopefully, now that Verizon is moving from CDMA, that garbage company can die. (And no, I don't live there, just know of their bs.) I can't imagine now that Sprint has been folded into T-Mobile, Verizon is leaving CDMA behind, Nextel is the punchline to jokes… that they have much less to live for. They have landline and cable television assets too though…

OH WAIT! SNAP! I just did some googling, right now, and as of Feb 2, 2021 Shentel has negotiated to sell their wireless assets and operations to T-Mobile (for $2 BILLION dollars). Thank the gods. I feel for the folks with landlines and cable tv from those jackwads, but at least maybe T-Mobile can do society a favor now and sweep that abomination of wireless hole into the dustbin of history.
 
I think my CPAP device to maintain my breathing while I sleep uses 3G to update itself.
And now you've hit on the real problem.

It's not about phones. Phones are easy enough to replace, most people switched to a 4G phone years ago.

The problem is the other devices that have cell service, like CPAP machines, cars, alarm systems, power grid systems, and all kinds of other embedded devices that aren't easily upgradeable. It's happened before, lots of things stopped working when 2G service was shut down.

My car had to have its 2G modem replaced when AT&T shut down 2G a few years back, I don't think there is a 4G modem module for it, which means the components that use cell service in the car will simply stop working when AT&T 3G shuts down. Not really a huge loss for me, but things like remote unlock and remote start from the app won't work any more.
 
I'm not sure how this will effect me. In my rural, hilly area, on the roads we have about 5% LTE coverage, about 10% is 1x/2x, 85% no coverage. I almost never see 3G. The nearest 5G is over 100 miles away.

If you see 1x, you're on 3G and will be impacted by this. EVDO is only a data-speed enhancement to that.
 
Why do they want to get rid of the CDMA network?
Mostly they just want to move away from it. It’s an old, outdated system. GSM won the battle for its versatility and expandability and CDMA just got left in the dust. IIRC, the WiMAX was the only CDMA-based 4G tech and it was horrible for Sprint. It was slow and unreliable. That’s what made Verizon jump to LTE, which is based upon GSM.
 
There's also a lot of non-cellphone devices that rely on the 3G networks.

We'd been using a StraightTalk HomePhone device for our legacy home telephone line - it used Verizon 3G service and let us keep the home phone functioning at a cost of ~$16/mo vs the $55-60/mo AT&T wanted for the POTS line. We'd been getting emails from StraightTalk about needing to buy a new device. Ended up just dropping it instead.

The after-market remote-start in my truck also uses the Verizon 3G service - it's what lets me lock/unlock/start my truck from my phone or watch -- handy if I'm in the garage and need to grab something out of the truck without going back in the house for my keys. The maker of the device is encouraging changing the hardware and offering an incentive to do so. Nice to know there's a bit more runway.
What I have seen is a fallback to 2G in areas where 3G got switched off (though that was with GSM and not CDMA, not sure if there some differences between those two in that regard). And it seems that almost all devices are able to support the older standards (the iPhone 12 for example still lists GSM/EDGE, which is 1G/2G, under supported networks).
 
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Starlink has 20ms latency and speeds of 300Mbps. Gigabit coming, depending on how rural you are. If you are semi-rural near a large city, gigabit will be unlikely.

Of course, if you are doing cable tv, that is another issue.
Does Starlink work with VPN's? I have a co-worker who has to use a cellular modem because they don't offer hi speed internet where he lives. He originally installed Satellite internet (not sure what company), but it didn't support VPN, so he had to drop it.
 
What I have seen is a fallback to 2G in areas where 3G got switched off (though that was with GSM and not CDMA, not sure if there some differences between those two in that regard). And it seems that almost all devices are able to support the older standards (the iPhone 12 for example still lists GSM/EDGE, which is 1G/2G, under supported networks).
Thanks. I'm not sure the remote-start device supports 2G, and I believe Verizon is trying to also shut that down on the same timeline. We shall see. It works now, I'll see what happens when it stops working. :)
 
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