Hundreds complain about failing mobile phone service since 3G switched off

Submitted ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨MHLoppy@fedia.io⁩ to ⁨australia@aussie.zone⁩

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-01-18/3g-mobile-phone-network-shutdown-complaints-australia/104823582

In short:

Regional and rural Australians say their ability to make phone calls has dramatically reduced since the 3G network was switched off in October.

Telstra and Optus shut down 3G to boost the 4G and 5G networks, claiming customer coverage would benefit as a result.

**What's next: **

The federal government says there may be a need for regulatory intervention if the situation does not improve.

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Comments

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malchior@aussie.zone ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
We’ll from what I experienced the other day whilst in a regional centre, I’ve got full 4G reception but severely limited access to the internet. I’d be guessing the towers are now over subscribed.

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Zozano@aussie.zone ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

The companies promised that reception would not go backwards and that if anything, customers would enjoy better connectivity.

However, network providers are adamant there has been no change to coverage levels since the switch off.

Am I missing something? Or did they just admit they shut down 3G for nothing.

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- hanrahan@slrpnk.net ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  3G was shut down so they can use the spectrum for other things.
  
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- FireWire400@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  I think they mean that it didn’t get worse following the 3G shutdown. Conveniently ignoring all the phones that now get no signal whatsoever.
  
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  - Zozano@aussie.zone ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    I mean, evident by the fact that the 4G signal hasn’t improved for many seems to suggest they were talking shit the whole time.
    
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FireWire400@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
Not to mention the thousands of phones that would be VoLTE capable but are blocked regardless…

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- Zozano@aussie.zone ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  This happened to me.
  
  I had a Oneplus 7 Pro. I turned 3G off before the shutdown and it was fine.
  
  Then Optus decided to brick my device because my phone wasn’t on their list of compatible devices.
  
  Fucking assholes.
  
  I then put a friends Telstra sim in the phone to see if it would work, and it was bricked on the Telstra network too.
  
  Apparently I could roll the phone back two android versions to make it work, but I shouldn’t fucking have to.
  
  There should be a class action lawsuit for this shit. My phone was only five years old and worked fine.
  
  Thanks for turning what I assume is tens of thousands of phones into e-waste so some dickhead with the latest 5G iPhone can take up an extra kilobit of bandwidth.
  
  Happened two months ago, but I’m still mad.
  
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  - FireWire400@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    Have you tried a Vodafone SIM? I’ve heard they’re less strict with their blocking.
    
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pHr34kY@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
My phone doesn’t receive half of its incoming calls. I actually narrowed it down to the VoLTE keepalive packets being transmitted with a MAC address of 00:00:00:00:00:00 when on CLAT (which is Telstra default) on all Google Pixels. The connection silently dies, there is no return UDP route, so the phone won’t ring.

I reported it to Google, but they don’t give a shit. I guess the million or so people with a pixel can just deal with it.

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- Salvo@aussie.zone ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  <sarcasm> Have you tried buying a new Pixel, and throwing your old one into landfill?</sarcasm>
  
  BuT tHe PiXeL iS a PrEmIuM pHoNe, LiKe ThE iPhOnE!
  
  Google will always treat their users as the product, no matter how much you pay for their hardware.
  
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  - pHr34kY@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    I replicated the same problem on the newer pixel.
    
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R00bot@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
This whole thing has been a mess. Thousands of Aussies had to buy new phones due to them using a phone allowlist instead of a blocklist (arguably they should have just let the phones stop working instead of blocking them outright). The allowlist they used was missing hundreds of 4G capable phones and was missing just about every overseas model of phone. I know 2 people whose phones were blocked for no reason.

Tourists coming to Australia are finding their phones blocked here, preventing them from using their phones in Australia.

000 calls are borked for thousands of Aussies as well.

We are one of the only countries in the world to turn off 3G. And we’re certainly the only one to fuck it up this badly. I’m convinced the big telcos only did this to drive phone sales (many of which will be bought/leased on exploitative plans), because god knows there’s no other compelling reason to shut 3G off.

What a joke.

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- zurohki@aussie.zone ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  
  (arguably they should have just let the phones stop working instead of blocking them outright). The allowlist they used was missing hundreds of 4G capable phones and was missing just about every overseas model of phone
  
  IIRC the issue is that phones must be able to dial 000 if there’s any mobile coverage at all. A bunch of VoLTE-capable phones either force 3G for 000 calls or aren’t compatible with Telstra’s custom VoLTE implementation, and there’s really no way for telcos to know these things.
  
  There’s no way for the owner to know, either. A bunch of 4G+VoLTE phones in the wild that people think are fine either can’t call 000 or can’t call 000 on Telstra’s network. So a phone on Optus might work fine on Optus VoLTE, might call 000 fine on Optus VoLTE, but wouldn’t be able to call 000 if there was only Telstra network coverage.
  
  And there’s no way for Optus to know which specific modem firmware your phone has, so even getting the same model phone and testing it isn’t a reliable solution.
  
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  - R00bot@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    Yep that’s the explanation I’ve heard. Telcos shifting this mess onto the consumer is pretty obviously not ideal. They shouldn’t have gone ahead with the 3G shutoff knowing these issues existed.
    
    They could have waited 4-5 years for the majority of Aussies upgrade to a new phone that supports Telstra’s VoLTE, implemented a fallback system on Telstra’s network for phones that don’t support it, etc.
    
    But they didn’t.
    
    Super poor form imo. If our government were serious about protecting Australians they would do something to punish these companies. But they won’t. And our slow slide towards America-style late-stage capitalism will continue.
    
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- quokka@aussie.zone ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  This is a pretty good rundown of how fucked it is medium.com/…/australias-3g-shutdown-telcos-to-blo… And now why there’s more interest in “restoring” IMEIs to compatible, but blocked, handsets than there was a year ago.
  
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vividspecter@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

“I think this whole thing needs to become a political issue — I think people in the bush need to start complaining and we need to get 3G back,” he said.

I understand where they are coming from, but 3G doesn’t inherently have better signal. The carriers may have fucked something up or they haven’t fully switched all of their old towers to 4G and 5G. And to be clear, both 4G and 5G can use the same low frequencies that 3G used, but are more efficient.

That’s not to say the rollout hasn’t been a bit of a mess with bad communication and last minute changes (the whole VoLTE emergency calling shitshow, for example).

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- Salvo@aussie.zone ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  The reason why enabling 3G would improve coverage is because low radio frequencies do travel further and are less affected by interference.
  
  This is why AM radio travels further than FM radio and why 4WDers used to carry UHF for local communication and AM or HF for long distance emergency communication.
  
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  - vividspecter@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    
    The reason why enabling 3G would improve coverage is because low radio frequencies do travel further and are less affected by interference.
    
    Both 4G and 5G support low frequencies. The protocols have nothing to do with the frequencies they support, although it can seem that way particularly with 5G, which only used high frequencies when it was initially rolled out.
    
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CameronDev@programming.dev ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
Regulatory intervention is supposed to happen before the issue occurs, not after…

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- Salvo@aussie.zone ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  It was Regulatory intervention that caused this problem.
  
  Government: “you need to make sure that your subscribers can access 000” Telcos: “we can only do this if we disconnect 3G” G: “that doesn’t make any sense whatsoever but we will believe you and give you carte blanche to ~~screw over your customers~~ comply with regulatory requirements”
  
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  - quokka@aussie.zone ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    The problem was that some handsets (including ones sold by the networks as “4G”) would drop to 3G for 000. Even same models on different firmware behaved differently. So the regulator said to ban any the networks weren’t 100% sure were compatible. With 30(?) days’ notice. And the online IMEI checker is incomplete/useless too. So now the only realistic place for average consumers to buy known-compatible handsets is from the network operators. At their prices, with their software.
    
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CurlyWurlies4All@slrpnk.net ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
The natural result of selling off our national infrastructure. Who’d have thunk it.

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- Nath@aussie.zone ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  Well, sort of but not really. Telecom had no 3G infrastructure - it didn’t exist yet when the carrier was privatised.
  
  But, I agree with you in essence that Telecom would not have disabled 3G like this. I also do not think they’d have decommissioned the analogue phone network when they did. Which also affected rural customers at the time.
  
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  - dai@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    Yeah I was one of the 3G / NextG subcontractors between Sydney, Canberra, Melbourne and Broken Hill.
    
    Amps gear was tossed outside the huts and would be collected at an undetermined date.
    
    The original 3G cabinets were not up to spec, so our crew after installing at many locations needed to revisit sites and install amplifiers. What a waste of resources.
    
    Was bad enough having to visit some sites due to their location, but twice was a nightmare. Not to mention every time we made changes on the towers we needed to get in each antennas zone, call 000, confirm molly & scrambling codes. To imagine how many of these “Telstra test calls” they would have been receiving during the rollout, poor bastards.
    
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- TinyBreak@aussie.zone ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  clearly not us, cause we’ve done it half a dozen times before and almost certainly will do it another dozen times.
  
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