The network operator Telefónica with its brand O2 announced that tomorrow, Thursday, its last 300 locations with the UMTS technology will be switched off. The company wants to use the freed-up frequencies for the faster successor 4G.
In the summer of 2021, Telefónica had gradually started the shutdown. The technology was “getting on in years, so we will replace it at the end of the year,” said Telefónica Germany boss Markus Haas at the time. The whole thing went faster than initially planned: work that was originally scheduled for November was already carried out in September.
Expensive UMTS licenses
What is out of date today was innovative and in great demand a good two decades ago: an auction of UMTS licenses carried out in 2000 brought around 50 billion euros into the state’s coffers. In retrospect, that was far too much, the telecommunications industry lacked money for the expansion, and dead spots continued to shape Germany’s mobile phone card for a long time. In the meantime, the telecommunications companies have improved their networks and are currently focusing on the ultra-fast 5G standard when expanding.
The 3G mobile communications standard is history after the changeover at Telefónica in Germany: Deutsche Telekom switched off its last 3G antennas on July 1, 2021. The changeover has also already been completed at Vodafone: The 3G shutdown took place via a multi-stage update of the configuration data of the radio cells, also in the summer of 2021.
The consequences of the 3G switch-off for consumers are minor: most smartphones have long been 4G-compatible. Problems only arise with very old devices – you can then only make calls with them using the 2G standard, which all three network operators continue to offer. According to Verivox, all branded smartphones that were newly released in Germany have been 4G / LTE-capable since 2016. This has been the case with Apple since 2013.
(dwi)