4G AND THE OPPORTUNITY BEHIND 2G AND 3G NETWORK SUNSETS
Drazen Drinic*, Principal Product Manager, Product Strategy – Product Center Cellular, u-blox
While the forced upgrade will disrupt businesses, they and their end users will benefit from more capable connected solutions.
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hen 2G, the second generation of cellular communication technology, was commercially launched in 1991, its use of digital communication technologies rather than analog ones ushered in a new era of cellular communication with the introduction of data transfers and text messages. 3G followed in its footsteps, stepping up data rates and bringing us the mobile broadband experience we as consumers now take for granted. But as the sun sets on 2G and 3G, it isn’t their initial beneficiaries — mobile phone users — that will be most affected.
6 Critical Comms - January/February 2024
Over the course of three decades, their low cost of ownership, ubiquitous coverage and widespread roaming agreements have made 2G, and to some extent 3G, essential enablers of the Internet of Things. Automotive emergency call systems, smart meters, vehicle telematics devices and tracking solutions are just a sampling of use cases that commonly continue to rely on 2G and 3G — and that will need to be upgraded as the technologies wind down. Fortunately, the immediate inconvenience this will cause businesses and end users comes with a clear silver lining: not only will
upgrading legacy solutions keep them from becoming obsolete along with the legacy networks they rely on, it will also allow IoT product developers and solution providers to tap into the value that today’s more advanced communication technologies provide, both to their and their customers’ benefit.
The sun begins to set According to a GSMA report focusing on the Asia–Pacific region1, the main considerations driving mobile network operators to sunset their 2G and 3G networks are cost reductions achievable by reallocating 2G and 3G spectrum to 4G and 5G. At the same time, mobile network operators (MNOs) are rightly wary to abandon 2G and 3G until both their own infrastructure and their customers’
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