en.Wedoany.com Reported - T-Mobile US, a mobile communications operator, will terminate its GSM-based 2G communication services this August, marking a complete shift of its network system to focus on 5G communications.
T-Mobile will officially end its 2G GSM service on August 3. The company had already discontinued its 3G service four years ago, making it the operator that provided 2G service the longest among all carriers. In the United States, AT&T ended the service in 2017, and Verizon followed in 2020.
In South Korea, starting with KT in 2012, SK Telecom and LG U+ terminated their 2G services in 2020 and 2021 respectively, ending the Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) communication era that began in 1996 when Korea Mobile Telecommunications (now SK Telecom) commercially launched the technology globally for the first time.
T-Mobile explained that the reason for retaining 2G service was to support international roaming. Some visitors to the U.S. use devices that do not support Voice over LTE (VoLTE); while they can use LTE data, voice calls must be completed through 2G circuit switching. Ankur Kapoor, T-Mobile's Chief Network Officer (CNO), stated that through cooperation with most global mobile operators over the past two and a half years, virtually no users now rely on 2G for voice or data services. The company has allowed ample time to inform the very few remaining customers and support their migration to the latest network.
Despite retaining 2G service for an extended period, T-Mobile has sparked controversy during its technology migration process. One day before shutting down its 3G network in 2022, T-Mobile abruptly terminated the LTE service of Sprint, which it had acquired in 2020. Sprint had originally supported Dish Network's Boost Mobile users, but T-Mobile adjusted network operations three years earlier than Dish had anticipated, causing difficulties for Boost Mobile users when upgrading to the latest devices. T-Mobile later reached an agreement with Dish, but external observers noted that this incident marked the beginning of Dish Network's wireless business troubles.
