Australia

My last whinge on this topic.

In the Android world, you could improve security and effectively extend the life of the phone by installing a 3rd party ROM, eg LineageOS. Depending on the community and skills of interested developers, this could continue being updated and even included upgrades to new Android versions with new features for years after the manufacturer abandoned it.

But some phones have proprietary implementations for VoLTE and VoWiFi. Eg on my Samsung phone,.which will soon stop receiving Samsung updates, everything on any AOSP based ROM works except VoLTE and VoWiFi.

So, this effectively makes these 3rd party OS's useless. You won't be able to take or make calls.

I'm not happy about that, and make make sure my next phone purchase will have VoLTE etc available on AOSP

Man if you are rocking any of those devices though its absolutely time to upgrade. Unless you use your phone for calls and text only and NOTHING else its a huge security risk to be using something that old and so far out of date.

I still get 3G sometimes 50km from the Melbourne cbd, despite having a 5g capable phone direct with Telstra. This cut off is a problem in these areas where reception is terrible.

The other thing that pisses me off about 5G is that the higher speeds are only over very short distances. So unless you're close to a tower or they start rolling out a heap more towers, most people won't get any benefit over 4g

I know where I live, and where the tower is, I can't get 5g.

I find it even funnier when some providers offer 5g plans capped at 100mbps, which is the same speed as their 4g plans

And don't forget 5g uses more battery than 4g, so unless you need the speed, turn it off and just use 4g.

I've got no use for 5g unless I was going to use it instead of NBN. And it doesn't beat fiber or HFC as far as I can tell... either in price or performance.

What's more interesting about the shutdown is how this might affect IoT devices that rely on 3G - e.g. Canberra's public transit system uses the Optus 3G network to enable its MyWay card system - once it goes down, what will that mean for commuters (especially given that Transport Canberra doesn't accept cash on buses since COVID).

Telcos are acting like switching off 3G is no big deal, since LTE has been around since 2012, get with the times! VoLTE has only been around since 2016, and even then, was limited to approved models. And only worked if you bought the phone directly from the telco. And only if you had postpaid plan. And only if your account had a “VoLTE enable” flag set by calling them.

To this day, when it doesn’t work phone makers and telcos will point the finger at each other, leaving customers with no clue who to chase for a solution. All parties still act like VoLTE is a nice to have and not a requirement. I really believe the rush to deploy 5G was to have the pretence to shut off 3G and force customers to buy new phones.

I had to root my phone, then use diagnostic serial access to the Qualcomm modem and Russian software to make VoLTE work on my 5G 2020 phone. I fear BYO mobile plans are dead now, buying direct from telcos is the only way they'll help you be able to make calls on your phone.

So, they will shut down 3G in areas that already have poor mobile coverage, even with 4G, and that won't get 5G any time soon. This will increase the number of people with poor mobile coverage and no other options. If at least there was some form of commitment to roll out 5G quickly and comprehensively, or some visibility of rollout plans, but there's not even that. So once again, we are at the mercy of the profit-driven service providers, who haven't expanded 5G past the major population centres in the five years since it has become available, and have no clear intentions of doing so.

Since all voice calls will be through VoLTE, does that mean call quality for everyone will seem noticeably better? I imagine there’ll still be a fallback low quality codec that gets used in low bandwidth scenarios - would even that sound better in practice?

There's this cool thing at&t did where even if you have volte and 4g, your phone still won't work if it isn't on their specific whitelist.

Had a very fun time after I missed a phone interview because of that.

Wasn't too happy about the thought of having to buy a new phone. Checks out VoLTE is included and enabled. That's it right?

This is the best summary I could come up with:

More Australians like Serge are likely to be caught out by further 3G shutdowns this year, with millions of Telstra and Optus customers (as well as those using smaller providers on those two networks) to lose 3G coverage in the coming months.

Serge said he also checked the phones of some family members and found some of their devices also didn't have VoLTE enabled by default, which caused issues when their 3G network disappeared.

However, Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman Cynthia Gebert said telcos were not required by law to continue to offer 3G services, which is why her office could not refer complaints it received about the decision to shut down 3G networks to any regulator.

The ombudsman's office said it would "not be able to handle complaints about having no coverage as a result of the shutdown, requests for the 3G network to stay connected, or handsets and devices that are no longer working and were not supplied as part of a current contract".

What's more, a 2023 report by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) found that many remote Indigenous communities were still relying on 3G networks, and already had poor or no coverage.

Mr Gregory from RMIT said the major telcos had been communicating the change with customers "reasonably well", but smaller providers — also known as Mobile Virtual Network Operators, or MVNOs — appeared to be less proactive.

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