And there are a bunch of plans that are 4G only anyways.
The ones with 5G also cost a bunch more.
Comment on Your 4G phone could be impacted by 3G shutdowns this year. Here's what to know
rainynight65@feddit.de 3 months ago
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.
No1@aussie.zone 3 months ago
spartanatreyu@programming.dev 3 months ago
The ones with 5G also cost a lot more.
What is the “ones” that you are referring to?
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.
indomara@lemmy.world 3 months ago
Yes, most of the pre-paid carriers I have checked have more expensive 5g plans. I am with aldi mobile which does.
No1@aussie.zone 3 months ago
The plans with 5G will usually cost more.
Cheapy plans/providers are usually 4G only.
dgriffith@aussie.zone 3 months ago
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.
Clent@lemmy.world 3 months ago
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.