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Three's 3G Switch-Off

5MHz of B1 would be super unusual, care to share the eNB?
NB ID 4182 (Macro) - UMTS, no idea it was rare though?

The mast that actually covers my home is eNB ID 849 (Macro) - LTE with just 5Mhz of Band 20 on 4G which is nowhere near anything to provide a decent service, there doesn't seem to be any 3G masts directly covering my home.
 
I ended up getting onto a 3G only mast in a call on my drive home yesterday, then stayed on 3G for the duration of my journey home.

I don't know what it is about calling on 3G, but to me considering the band it is on, 3G calling is so much more resilient to 4G/5G/VoLTE calling, feels to me more stable... I'll miss it when it is gone, especially in rural areas.

Indeed, and it seems when you make a VoLTE call and jump over to 3G during a call (like 3G only site), and subsequently handover to another site, if that site has 3G+4G, the network will seem to keep you on 3G for the call. You can see this when you end the call your phone jumps back to 4G, even if your phone is VoLTE capable.

Switching a call from VoLTE->3G seems to happen well but I’m not sure what condition has to be met (if any) the other way around. That might explain this “lots of 3G” sites perception that we’ve been getting.
 
NB ID 4182 (Macro) - UMTS, no idea it was rare though?

The mast that actually covers my home is eNB ID 849 (Macro) - LTE with just 5Mhz of Band 20 on 4G which is nowhere near anything to provide a decent service, there doesn't seem to be any 3G masts directly covering my home.

You’ll be surprised. I guess it’s area dependant. But three have less subscribers than the other UK MNOs, and they typically always deploy band20 with at least 15MHz of band3, and usually also 10MHz of band 1, which alleviates a lot of congestion on band20, keeping it reserved for users on the very edge of coverage. I’ve often found it to be fine tbh.
 
Agreed. I live in an area where VoLTE works really poorly to the point that it's borderline unusuable on Vodafone and Three, and better but still flawed on EE and O2.

3G Calls were rock solid and never once failed or even experienced interference for me. Call quality was still good.

I Know that VoLTE can work really well in places. But in my experience especially where I live it's just not good enough to really replace 3G but they're going ahead with it anyways.
yeah i think it will end up with a poorer user experience overall, I know that 3G is more power hungry than 4G, but there might be a reason for that beyond the legacy codecs.
 
NB ID 4182 (Macro) - UMTS, no idea it was rare though?

The mast that actually covers my home is eNB ID 849 (Macro) - LTE with just 5Mhz of Band 20 on 4G which is nowhere near anything to provide a decent service, there doesn't seem to be any 3G masts directly covering my home.
Oh, you mean 5MHz of 2100MHz spectrum used for 3G (UMTS), not B1 (Band 1) which I typically use when referring to 4G (and so assume others do too - sorry!)
 
Oh, you mean 5MHz of 2100MHz spectrum used for 3G (UMTS), not B1 (Band 1) which I typically use when referring to 4G (and so assume others do too - sorry!)
No worries, I still find it all confusing anyway. I just hope they use the spectrum freed up from their 3G coverage to better improve the 4G network.
 
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yeah i think it will end up with a poorer user experience overall, I know that 3G is more power hungry than 4G, but there might be a reason for that beyond the legacy codecs.

it's simply older. On the access side, OFDMA + SC-FDMA framing and higher modulation which LTE utilise would have required too much processing power at the time 3G was standardised circa 1999. Also it's an evolving science.

As chips in the site equipment and the user equipment both get more efficient, they can process frames faster; with LTE we can increase the complexity of the channelisation, modulation and encoding, and across multiple carriers simultaneously in realtime, to use the radio resource more efficiently (At the expense of processing power, which is cheaper now than in 1999). With UMTS, each handset has to transmit the full symbol rate with a different code, which is also quite power hungry on both sides. So there isn't really anything 3G has over 4G (that I can think of).

In fact some ultra rural networks originally deployed as 2G only, are now being upgraded to 2G+4G (skipping 3G). Early 4G handsets like the iPhone 5 and those nokia windows phones around 2012 (both with no VoLTE support) can still drop to 2G for calls/texts (CSFB), and you can imagine how many of these are in circulation in poorer parts of the world. 4G also supports 1.4MHz channels unlike 3G, which is really beneficial in limited backhaul, limited power, situations.
 
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The end result will be better for both the operator (cheaper) and the user (more efficient), but there will definitely be a period between 3G switch off and sites being upgraded.

The network operators led users to believe this would be instant or very short, but it clearly won’t be

oh yeh definitely that's for sure. going to be some painful issues with Three in particular, as the switch off phases are really spread out over the year; as the users handoff in and out of 3G switch off areas they are going to have call dropping issues I think (you heard it here first! hehe).

It's not the first time Three have set themselves up for failure (I remember their 4G Samsung RAN not working in tandem their older 3G Nokia flexi equipment to begin with). On the other hand the postcode checker is well planned.

I think Voda, EE already knew this so they did a very rapid shutdown over 5-6 weeks to limit 3G->LTE handover issues between shutdown and non-shutdown areas to a short time in Winter when people are out less.

Nevertheless it will be sad to see it go. When I have seen 3G, i seem to get perfectly usable data and calls, for '99 / early 00s tech this stuff still works surprisingly well in 2024. Can't say the same about 2G on a smartphone really tbh.
 
it's simply older. On the access side, OFDMA + SC-FDMA framing and higher modulation which LTE utilise would have required too much processing power at the time 3G was standardised circa 1999. Also it's an evolving science.

As chips in the site equipment and the user equipment both get more efficient, they can process frames faster; with LTE we can increase the complexity of the channelisation, modulation and encoding, and across multiple carriers simultaneously in realtime, to use the radio resource more efficiently (At the expense of processing power, which is cheaper now than in 1999). With UMTS, each handset has to transmit the full symbol rate with a different code, which is also quite power hungry on both sides. So there isn't really anything 3G has over 4G (that I can think of).

In fact some ultra rural networks originally deployed as 2G only, are now being upgraded to 2G+4G (skipping 3G). Early 4G handsets like the iPhone 5 and those nokia windows phones around 2012 (both with no VoLTE support) can still drop to 2G for calls/texts (CSFB), and you can imagine how many of these are in circulation in poorer parts of the world. 4G also supports 1.4MHz channels unlike 3G, which is really beneficial in limited backhaul, limited power, situations.
Thanks, that's a great geeky explanation :)
 
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“Hello, we are planning network improvements at your registered postcode area in the coming days. We apologise for any disruption caused. You can check if the work is underway at https://smarty.co.uk/network-status-checker. If you have no reception, you can try Wi-Fi calling ”

Oh hello ! N1? 3G switch off ? Both? Who knows !
3 has said the same many times for my location, and 0 changes are apparent so don't get your hopes up! Especially as upgrades seem to have slowed down to a snails pace.
 
“Hello, we are planning network improvements at your registered postcode area in the coming days. We apologise for any disruption caused. You can check if the work is underway at https://smarty.co.uk/network-status-checker. If you have no reception, you can try Wi-Fi calling ”

Oh hello ! N1? 3G switch off ? Both? Who knows !
My wife (on smarty) got the same text. Anyone else on smarty got it? I'm wondering if they've texted everyone ahead of the 3G switch off without actually limiting to postcode areas
 
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Feeling to me likely that they've sent to everyone by mistake instead of just those the first areas marked for 3G turn off

Yeh looks like it. The first phase starts next week so the timing of the message is likely related to 3G switch off.
 
3 has said the same many times for my location, and 0 changes are apparent so don't get your hopes up! Especially as upgrades seem to have slowed down to a snails pace.

Haven’t seen any evidence of upgrades slowing down to a snails pace.

In the past couple of months I’ve seen phase9 sites go up, phase8 sites get their n78 antennas, n1 deployed in some areas, b28 in more rural locations…
 
Haven’t seen any evidence of upgrades slowing down to a snails pace.

In the past couple of months I’ve seen phase9 sites go up, phase8 sites get their n78 antennas, n1 deployed in some areas, b28 in more rural locations…
Applications for masts have significantly slowed down
 
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