Survey Claims 4.3 Million UK People May Lose O2 Data Access After 3G Switch Off UPDATE
A new Opinium survey of 2,000 UK adults, which was commissioned by Uswitch.com and conducted on 7th Jan 2025, has claimed that more than 4.3 million Brits could potentially be left without access to mobile broadband if they don’t upgrade their device before O2 switches-off their 3G service (inc. MVNO’s Tesco Mobile, GiffGaff and Sky Mobile etc.).
Just to recap. Back in 2023 O2 (Virgin Media) became the final operator to reveal their plan for switching off their old 3G mobile data network (here), which will begin and end this year (withdrawal will occur in phases). O2 then followed that by announcing that they’d also start shifting almost all remaining traffic and customers off their oldest 2G network this year too (here), but they won’t be turning that off completely for “several years” because it’s still necessary for some vital services (e.g. Smart Meters – home energy tracking).
However, the new survey claims that O2’s 3G switch-off could leave 4.3 million British people without access to mobile data, and that some 6% of respondents (almost 3 million people) on O2, Tesco Mobile, Giffgaff, Virgin Media and Sky Mobile don’t know if their phone is 4G or 5G ready. But confusingly, the same survey also states that “more than 1.3 million say they still use a 3G handset“.
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Ernest Doku, telecoms expert at Uswitch.com, said:
“The 3G switch-off, which began last year, is a crucial step to free up capacity for expanding 4G and 5G networks, offering significantly faster and more reliable connectivity than 3G.
While the majority of customers do have a 4G or 5G compatible phone, there will still be a proportion of customers with older devices who will need to upgrade this year.
If you’re still using an older phone, you can check your device’s 4G and 5G compatibility by looking for ‘Network Mode’ or ‘Prefered Network’ under ‘Network’ or ‘Mobile Data’ in your Settings. If you see 4G or 5G, your phone is compatible.
If you do need to upgrade, there are plenty of affordable options out there, and it may be worth looking into a refurbished device if you’re not looking for the latest launches and don’t want a costly upgrade.
It’s also worth running a coverage check for your area – Ofcom has one on its website – especially if you live rurally and have previously relied on 3G. Most of the country has strong 4G or 5G coverage, but it’s always a good idea to check which networks have the best coverage in the places you frequent most.
The 3G switch-off is an important step in moving us towards a faster and more reliable service, but consumers must be fully aware of their network plans and how it might impact their device.”
A Virgin Media O2 spokesperson told ISPreview:
“The switch off of the 3G network – agreed by industry and the government in 2021 and already completed by other network operators – will allow us to reallocate mobile spectrum to more efficient 4G and 5G services and improve customers’ experience with faster speeds, more reliable streaming and higher quality voice calls.
The vast majority of customers already have a 4G or 5G device and will not be impacted or need to take any action as a result of the 3G switch off. Nonetheless, our priority will be to provide support to those who will be impacted to ensure they stay connected, and we’ll contact these customers directly.”
At this point we’d have to sound a note of caution, as Uswitch are known for surveys like this, which don’t always reflect reality. Both EE and Vodafone have already switched-off their 3G services and, while a small portion of users did lose data connectivity, the issues did not seem to cause any truly wide scale problems and some areas saw a positive outcome (here and here). Three UK are about to finish their 3G switch-off, and it’s a similar story (here).
Mobile operators have generally been compensating for the 3G switch-off in some areas by introducing upgrades to newer 4G and 5G services and supporting customers with 3G-only devices (e.g. offering handset upgrades and extra support to vulnerable users). The removal of 3G also freed up some radio spectrum that can be re-farmed for use by more modern services, which could boost network performance.
On the other hand, there’s still not really enough research in this area to be able to draw any firm conclusions about the overall impact, although we also haven’t seen a huge avalanche of complaints (you’d expect to see that if millions were cut-off). We thus suspect the portion of consumers who do experience a strongly negative outcome will be very small (i.e. those in areas where 3G is switched off and there’s no viable 4G or 5G signal to replace it, although 2G will often still exist as a fallback for voice and texts).
Digging deeper. Uswitch notes that only 875 respondents to their survey used an O2 based mobile service. But of those, just 51 said they knew their phone is not 4G or 5G ready and 110 did not know. So, for those who don’t know or know they are not 4G or 5G compatible, the comparison site calculated 159/2000 = 8.0% multiplied by the adult population (54,196,443) to get that 4.3 million.
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The sample size here is tiny and doesn’t take account of how much impact O2’s support campaign, end-user device changes and network upgrades will have as the switch-off occurs. Take with a sizeable pinch of salt. On the other hand, O2 does perhaps support more legacy 3G devices than rival operators, which could prove to be a challenge to migrate. Time will tell.
UPDATE 3:06pm
We’ve added a comment from VMO2 above.
Mark is a professional technology writer, IT consultant and computer engineer from Dorset (England), he also founded ISPreview in 1999 and enjoys analysing the latest telecoms and broadband developments. Find me on X (Twitter), Mastodon, Facebook, BlueSky, Threads.net and Linkedin.
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EE became only half useable for me after their 3G switch off such that it forced me to upgrade my 4G phone to a 5G phone as the gaps in 4G coverage where my old phone would fall back to 3G were unbearable. Even 4G+5G today isn’t quite as good as the 3G+4G coverage I had before.
O2’s coverage is worse than EE’s. I wouldn’t want to be an O2 customer with a 4G phone, coverage is going to be very patchy.
EE work fine here 4G+ 210 down and 70 up and 5G with 400 down and 110 up.
EE’s 4G coverage footprint exceeded 3G for many years before switchoff, largely because of 800Mhz deployment. It’s not the “G” (or “RAT” in tech terms) that dictates coverage, it’s the frequency in use.
No doubt one of the reasons why they are getting rid of 3G, it will get people to buy new phones. I know they said it is to get more space for useless 5G.
I panicked a couple of days ago, I thought my Oppo phone had died, it would not turn on. put it back on charge for a while and it worked then. Very strange.
I really don’t want to buy a new phone, I don’t want 5G and to be honest, I can’t see any phones I really like, I am not a fan of the look of the look and size of my Oppo, but that is all you could get was that syle.
Useless 5G? Whet on earth are you on about?
I doubt anyone would notice the difference, they’d STILL have no useful data on o2. They’re consistently the worst anyhow.
That said, Vodafone has begun gunning for the same title of ‘worst’ because since the 3G switch off, Vodafone’s network (where 4G was just fine and worked really well) is now awful and is obviously widespread judging by the volume of complaints I see in addition to my own data from services over the country.
From experiences I’ve had with my mum moving to Vodafone from O2 in a Vodafone host area, it’s a lot better and you see 4G more too.
I was in a restaurant earlier on O2, about 180m from the telephone exchange but had bad signal due to the elevation. I could not do anything on O2, I couldn’t even send a Discord message and I was juggling between no signal, 2G, 3G and 4G. Meanwhile my mum on Vodafone could send images to family and I didn’t see it drop to EDGE either (I assume she was on B8+20 4G but didn’t bother to check).
O2 need to switch off 3g asap the network is so slow and patchy on 4g.
Yeah I was thinking the same and I’m on an older iPhone se 2nd generation and it picks up 3G but I’ve got Vodafone in it but O2 has said they won’t be turning this off until the end of 2025 set up a December but what happens if you’re in the middle of nowhere you won’t get no signal so ever it’s lying on two gm3g if that goes off there might have no internet at all
How long ago was the 4G rollout now? I’m surprised any pre-4G devices still even work, to be honest! They must be at least a decade old by now?
What have the age of the devices got to do with things? Some devices are over 30 year old and still work.
Batteries, for starters!
What I wanna know is if pay as you go will get access to 5G as most my calls at using the 3G network there’s no VoLTE?
The providers are still rolling out 5G and they see to consider 5G a premium service with PAYG customers only getting 4G SIMs.
Wait – this is hilarious. O2 has about 23 million mobile subscribers. Are they seriously suggesting nearly a 5th of their customers are going to be left without working coverage?
Of course the reality is nothing like that. I’m not quite sure what Opinium and USwitch are up to – this survey is just asking the wrong question to the wrong people, and then getting the wrong number.
Bit embarrassing to be putting out something so flawed, to be honest.
Are smart meters included in this survey?
No, they just surveyed some people and asked them if their phone was 3G or not
I see my phone switching to 3G all the time and I have an iPhone 16 Pro. The measure about low data is meaningless. 3G is much slower than 4G/5G so of course there will be much less data used on 3G. What they should use data seconds used on 3G vs 4G/5G. And also this comparison is obviously going to be biased by location so aggregating all cells is going to misrepresent the potential problems. O2 coverage sucks so I will be moving off then in February.
Let’s see if they refarm 3g to at least 4g including in areas like London where they have really good indoor signal and data speeds more than acceptable. I’m really hoping they don’t just decommission in London but actually refarm and then O2 will be absolutely excellent as their indoor coverage is really really good.
They absolutely will. O2 is spectrum starved in urban areas.
It may not happen overnight as some hardware might need swapped
Wish phones could turn 2g and 3g off, without it bricking 4g calling (on samsung phones when they reacted the patch to fix the bug in VoLTE remote take over of a phones modem the fix made it so if WCDMA was disabled > set to LTE only or LTE/NR VoLTE calls stop Working)
, iPhone randomly gets stuck on 3g
In a county that never even got as far as anywhere near 3g coverage. In Norfolk you can not walk 100yds in any direction, even in the city centre without a data drop or signal loss on any network, Thats if you’re lucky enough to get a working signal at all( 2g,3g,4g or 5g!)
Even areas in the city suburbs now have worse usable coverage than 10 years ago! A dreadful 3g signal or no signal at all replaced with a absolutely useless strength 4g signal that ticks a box in the stats somewhere.Such progress?
With landlines switching over to broadband,which again coverage and speeds is nothing short of embarrassing, with no workable mobile signal, there’s some very serious issues in large parts of the country fast approaching that won’t be able to be dragged under the carpet with way off the mark industry stats.
Same situation on Dorset, towns with 50k+ people are now much worse off since the 3G switch off. Previously nwe had 4G coverage with 3G fallback, now it just totally drops out. No improvement on 4G at all, and no 5G likelihood ever.
OFCOM clearly only care about the cities. The UK is worse than man 3rd world counties for mobile coverage.
the industry stats are a far more reliable benchmark than any personal opinion.
There is a lot of “boy who cried wolf” when it comes to this stuff. People who are insistent that it is worse when it can be proven that it isn’t, or your rant about overall broadband coverage and speeds which is at total odds with reality. With 4G also comes the issue of phones that don’t support VoLTE or don’t have it enabled for some reason.
The same thing happened in Australia with their recent 3G shutdown. The Aus gov released reports from the telcos proving that a lot of the complaints about poorer service were either not based in fact or could be easily fixed (eg someone had a 3G only booster or had a 3G/4G one locked to 3G; replacement / reconfiguration resolved the problem). Aside from the separate issue around emergency calls (not a problem the UK has) life has gone on and the sky hasn’t caved in.
I don’t know what O2 directly is planning to do for the 3G switchoff, but I know that some MVNOs plan to take this situation incredibly cautiously and I think this situation will be a bit overblown. I’m hoping O2 themselves does the right thing, but we really need to see changes faster.
Throughout the last few months, I’ve steadily noticed 5G n28 coverage rapidly expanding and it now means that parts of mid Wales, Herefordshire and the Forest of Dean finally has O2 5G coverage which should greatly improve performance… but that’s only in a small subset of areas and the benefit isn’t going to be as big if you’re not on SA. It would be nice to see this on DSS.
Despite increased 5G coverage, I still am yet to see any significant changes in a 130K pop city and I genuinely wonder whether this is going to make me to move off. The network can already be unbearable at times and I had two extended periods just today where I had practically no data on O2 (one in a no/low signal situation although Vodafone was fine and one in a residential area).
Adding more band 8 to 4G might not be enough with the increased demand on the 4G network with 3G being shut off and 2G being used for emergencies only or rural areas. O2 needs to start deploying their spectrum, we need to see more B40 and n78 coverage alongside B3 and n28 in more congested areas.
These opinion polls are so drastically wrong and personally I think targeted.
Almost like uSwitch has something to gain.
I personally think that in order to do these polls, information should be acquired first.
Standing outside a community centre after bridge club is just targeted misinformation targeting the less technical.
What these surveys have always failed to ask is ‘do you use data’ most people will not notice the drop from 3G to 2G,
some people will notice the 3G backup not being available but based on the fact that O2 uses lower frequencies for both 4G and 5G in most places than 3G it shouldn’t be needed unless their is a major capacity issue.
I recently found myself on a voice call using O2, I started off on WiFi calling with 5G connected in idle mode, WiFi calling dropped and call continued to 4G, then over the call period dropped to 3G and quickly to 2G.
3G is very inefficient for calls as weak signal for me, 2G is ok, however 4G is also fine for calls for me but for whatever reason that’s where it ended up.
I think the sooner the older bands 2G and 3G are removed or made special use only, the networks will continue to operate less efficiently.
Setting devices by advanced settings to only use 4G and 5G and not drop back to older technologies causes me no loss of services, even in places where 3G would randomly kick in.
The same here is to be said for Vodafone now they have already killed 3G, there’s occasions where 2G tunes in for seemingly no reason.
It’s worth noting that my issues occur on new mast setups from both O2 and Vodafone which are high capacity so something in the configurations between device and network needs to change to stop the silly outcomes of day to day mobile usage.
Well despite me formatting the above well it posted like crap
I live in Winchester, Hampshire and O2’s data reception has been terrible for years now. Doing a speed test on the high street and I got less than 3Mbps where as my EE got nearly 180Mbps, often you only get emails once you connect to a WiFi source. I’ve set my phone to send texts via the ancient “SMS” as if trying to use a more modern data method the person you sent it to gets it once home and they have connected to their home WiFi, too late for you to meet then, the whole reason of trying to catch them with the text. Obviously once the SMS service is closed down I can’t do this, been with O2 for 26 years now and only keep as I’m also with Virgin for my home services and it has perks having both BUT am thinking this year is when I leave as they don’t appear to be fixing this problem anytime soon.
SMS Service switch off? First I’ve heard not it.
Something changed my words – should read “First I’ve heard OF it”.
Additionally is this an expectation that ‘WhatsApp’ will replace Text Messaging (SMS)?
SMS switch off may be a ‘technical fault’ that comes and goes. I live about an hour south of Birmingham, recently yet again I was able to do everything except send an SMS. Tech non-support wanted me to jump tthrough all manner of hoops even though the issue ‘was not account based’ so I sent a printed formal complaint to their registered address
The O2 3G switch will result in more problems than solutions but it will not be as bad as could be. After the VF Merger, VF will sell off some spectrum and sites to O2 helping their congestion especially in VF host areas. O2’s boostbox now have B3 4G but it shows to be very reluctant to connect phones to this network and mostly remains on the B1 3G that boostboxes originally come with. O2 should come up with a new boostbox anyway and Wi-Fi calling will replace them. O2 is overally a bare minimal network anyway so switching off 3G is like throwing a stone at a person’s dented head, it will only make it slightly worse than it already is.
There will a larger problem with calls. Many older 4G phones will either not have hardware support for 4G calling or won’t have a software update that allows 4G calling to be enabled.