[alerighi]

You can't shut down 2G, because there are a lot of devices, mainly embedded systems like alarms, lift emergency call button, GPS trackers, etc. that still use 2G. Also 2G is the only reliable network connection in a lot of areas that are not otherwise reached by 3G/4G/5G, mainly because a 2G connection is more tolerant to low signal and noise, and also is low frequency, thus 2G is the only option available in situations such as on top of mountains and stuff. And finally there is still a lot of people, maybe elders, that don't have/want a smartphone (mainly because they are more complex to use etc.) and still use an old Nokia with 2G networks (they only need to call or send SMS in the end).

Also: VoLTE is not a thing since a lot of years, and probably there are even a ton of smartphones out there that does not support it (and thus switch back to 2G/3G to place voice calls).

[Hendrikto]

You claim that they cannot be disabled, while this is already happening [0][1][2]. Some countries, like Switzerland, already completed the shutdown years ago [2].

[0]: https://newsroom.vodafone.de/2g-abschaltung-macht-lte-und-5g...

[1]: https://www.telekom.de/hilfe/2g-abschaltung

[2]: https://www.rosenberger-telematics.com/en/news/switching-off...

[alerighi]

It's easy to make the switch in a rich country with less than 10 millions of inhabitants, mostly living in big cities.

[kalleboo]

Ever since the analog TV shutdown and the refarming of those low frequencies to 4G LTE, you see that 4G actually has higher coverage than 2G/3G (this both in sparsely-populated places like Australia and dense ones like Japan).

And for 2G especially GSM has a physical cell size limit due to TDMA that LTE does not have so in sparse areas the same transmitter location can reach further.

If in your country 2G still has better coverage that's not due to technical superiority of the standard but due to decisions made by the operator.

[FridayoLeary]

I think you are wrong. 2g and 3g is slowly but surely being killed everywhere. Which is a shame because it's much easier on batteries then 4g, but they want that bandwidth.

[crote]

A lot of this is a chicken-and-egg problem.

For example, lower-frequency bands have longer reach, but lower bandwidth. Because everyone has 2G support, it makes sense to put 2G on the lower frequencies as fallback, with 3G/4G/5G on higher frequencies as optional bandwidth booster. But this also means 5G reliability is being limited by its frequency! You could have better 5G - if it could use the frequency currently occupied by 2G...

It also doesn't help that 2G and 3G aren't forward-compatible. They require their own dedicated frequency, so you need to sacrifice a lot of potential bandwidth for a small number of low-data devices. 4G and beyond can play nice with future tech: a single base station using a single frequency can handle both 4G and 5G connections at once - it'll dynamically allocate the air time as needed.

About the elderly: my 95-year-old grandma uses a tablet for video calls and a big-button 4G-capable feature phone. My 85-year-old other grandma has fully embraced her smartphone. Turns out they really like seeing pictures of their great-grandkids! Give them a reason to switch and they will adopt it - they both ditched their land lines.

Same with elevators and stuff: schedule a kill date 5 years into the future and they'll be replaced by 4G-capable units instead of ancient slightly-cheaper 2G-only ones when their warranty inevitably expires.

[alerighi]

It's not that simple. There are a ton of legacy systems that upgrading would cost a lot of money and it's not the fact or replacing a 100 euros smartphone. A lot of these systems have a critical (safety) function, and thus if they stop working there would be consequences (I've mentioned the elevator alarm, but consider alarms for plants in remote areas that use 2G to send out alarms, let's say a pumping station for sewer, remote sensors in the mountains, dataloggers, electronic bracelet given to people that has restrictive sentences, etc).

This is the same reasoning why they keep active the "old" analog telephone network, why not everyone is switched to VOIP, because there are situations where it's still used by stuff that is critical or too expensive to replace.

> with 3G/4G/5G on higher frequencies as optional bandwidth booster.

There are 5G bands in the ~700MHz bandwidth (that was recovered by switching to more efficient encoding for DTV) that could be used that are even lower than 2G that is around 900MHz.

They could (and probably will) dismiss 2G for consumer use, but keep some frequencies that are used by operators that provide MTM SIM.

> Give them a reason to switch and they will adopt it - they both ditched their land lines.

I've tried to make my grandma learn how to use a phone to send SMS multiple times and failed. If she uses a mobile phone (rare situation) she uses it as a landline phone, that is type the number that she wants to call, not even using the contacts in the phone. To be fair I had difficulties explaining how to use a cordless landline phone.

Speaking of elderly, there are a lot of them that have dedicated devices that they can use to make emergency calls to registered numbers, that probably use 2G network (some other use even landline). Since these devices are even provided for free by the national healthcare system, I see that there is not much money to spend to upgrade them.

BTW, are we sure that all the smartphone out there support VoLTE? If not, to make phone calls they need to fallback to 3G/2G, it was a common problem not many years ago, with some providers (Iliad) that even started supporting VoLTE like less than 2 years ago...

[aryonoco]

I can tell you that here in Australia we shut down 2G in 2011 and 3G in 2022-2023.

And yes many things broke, train ticket vending machines stopped working, smart meters stopped working, etc. But then the got replaced.

2G and 3G is a horrible waste of bandwidth compared to 5G. Keeping them on and wasting all that bandwidth is borderline negligence.

[crote]

Interestingly, my country turned off 3G before 2G.

I think the reasoning was that the heavy data 3G users had already upgraded to 4G and beyond, and low data 3G users could fall back to 2G, so retiring 3G would have negligible impact - while opening up a lot of bandwidth for 4G and 5G.

On the other hand, there were plenty of 2G-only low data users around, so retiring that early would break stuff for a lot of people. Keeping it around longer gave people more time to upgrade.

[creatonez]

It's already been completely shut down in large swaths of the world.

> mainly because a 2G connection is more tolerant to low signal and noise

Huh? Everything I've heard about 2G indicates that it is an incredibly noisy protocol with horrible congestion characteristics, and that it craps out even when there's only a few devices. Maybe it's only winning because it has nearly completely disappeared?