2.7M Brits still use a 3G only handset
comparedial.comHas 4G/5G improved? When I lived in the UK (Midlands until 2019) it was entirely unreliable. I'd wager 75% of my connection was on 3G as soon as I was more than 3Km from a town's high street.
I can say with confidence that the shift from 4G/LTE to 5G where I live now in British Columbia (Canada) mountains is not fun. It's significantly less reliable. I understand that its 10x faster, but I'd much prefer reliable over fast when it comes to mobile phones.
I've found LTE to be both faster and more reliable where I'm attached to a tower that provides LTE and UMTS in the same band (e.g. the 2degrees network in New Zealand uses the 900 MHz band for both UMTS and LTE at many of their sites). UMTS has remarkably poor peformance at the cell edge where it at best data connections can only deliver a few kilobits at random intervals whereas LTE provides a reliable and consistent data connection even if it is only 100kbps. I've seen LTE maintain a stable connection at signal levels where GSM would have long since dropped the connection and UMTS would struggle. Makes stuff like emails usable at the far edge of LTE coverage where it's impossible to achieve the same off the UMTS signal from the same tower in the same band. It's so good I hate it when my phone falls back to UMTS in places I know full well LTE service exists. Thankfully all three carries in my country are planning to switch off UMTS in the next two years which will greatly improve service.
I live in Northern Ireland, I get 5G pretty much everywhere I've cared to look. I do a lot of cycling and I stream Spotify at max settings and it's never cut out even in the middle of nowhere so I assume I'm getting at least 4G everywhere.
In Belfast I get 115/20 mbps down/up with EE, I think I remember hearing there's something dodgy with whether what your phone shows as 5G is actually 5G but that's easily fast enough for anything I'm likely to be doing from my phone.
I'd say it's been like this for years. Looking at a coverage map it looks like it gets spottier out west where fewer people live though
Doesn't Spotify buffer? A few seconds of dropout is fine for playing songs where you can easily buffer a minute or two of data; not so good for a phonecall which ends within those same few seconds without an active connection.
It also caches whole songs.
5G (and 4G before it) has more spectrum allocated at higher and lower frequencies. If your carrier has licenses for low frequency and deploys it, it should help a bit with coverage.
The 800 MHz band helps a lot to increase coverage, I think. Used to carry analogue TV signals.
Recently visited South Yorkshire for the first time in 4 years. I didn’t notice a big difference between 3 and 4G coverage, but it was shocking how much of the city area has complete coverage blackspots. Both for myself connected to EE and a friend connected to Vodafone.
South Yorkshire can be hilly which may account for black spots. Not a good excuse, but a challenge mobile providers don’t see often enough in the UK to sufficiently account for.
Had no problems anywhere in the UK in recent years on 4G and I've been all over the place.
4G has been incredibly reliable for me. Even on a £10/month SIM only thing, I was up a volcano in the middle of nowhere in Iceland and able to make calls.
Was your carrier Three/EE? They were terrible.
I found in the UK most carriers 3G was horrid, and 4G actually worked. Vodafone best, second was Three, then O2. Circ early 2020s.
My iPhone 13 mini burns a percent of the battery every few minutes in areas with poor cell reception. That was the first year with 5G support if I remember right. Locking to 4G doesn't seem to make a huge difference. Maybe the new modems don't suck?
It'll last a day or two with good cell reception; longer in airplane mode.
4G has been rock solid for me since 2010 (I dont use 5G due to battery reasons) - in Sweden/Switzerland
When I still lived in south Hampshire, I couldn't get any Internet via 4G. 5G barely chugged. Now in Berkshire both 4G and 5G work quite well. I'm on Vodafone network though so YMMV.
Whether it matches the 3G coverage you had, I'm not sure. But in general, yes, 4G coverage has improved significantly since 2019.
It's considerably better, I live in the East Midlands in a rural village and get 4G and 5G depending on where I am in the house.
Ironically 3G is often the reason 4G/5G has poor reception.
1G/2G/3G all need to have a dedicated channel for itself. They were usually given the frequencies with the longest range, which is the 800MHz band. When 4G was introduced it couldn't share that band with 3G, so it was usually given space on higher frequencies around 1800MHz and 2500MHz. Those bands also allow a higher data rate, and anyone out of their range could fall back to 3G so it's a win-win, right?
Buuuuut now we're stuck with 4G in a band with poor reception, and throwing out 3G means losing coverage. Ideally the 4G sites in low-density areas would be moved to 800MHz, but that's going to require significant effort because every single antenna will need to be modified by engineers. Had 4G been deployed to 800MHz initially this wouldn't have been an issue - but that wasn't really possible because it would've meant worse speeds for existing 3G customers.
This whole issue is avoided with 5G because 4G and 5G were explicitly designed to coexist on the same channel.
All this is true, but there is a bit of nuance. Long range isn't always desirable for wireless communication. Certainly if you are talking about low population areas then it's king. But when you start talking about heavily populated areas the long range becomes a detriment for the network stability. You can end up with cell towers servicing too many people (streaming youtube) which can ultimately overload a node but also cause a lot of signal disruption.
As population density goes up, the higher frequency bandwidths become much more desirable. This is part of the reason why the WiFi standard has been pushing up into 5ghz and 60ghz frequencies. Because you don't want your wifi signal to be yelled over to the neighbor.
> Furthermore, the study also reveals 21% of those with a 3G handset aren’t willing to upgrade, and will simply continue to use their phone without internet connectivity.
Seems reasonable. Is this supposed to be a bad thing?
Imagine if Apple or Google were retroactively removing a feature. The shitstorm would be outrageous.
Where I'm from, the same discussion appears every two years, when the government tries once more to shutdown FM radio. Luckily, they always get shut down by the people. Maybe don't try to shut down public services that millions of people actually rely on.
>when the government tries once more to shutdown FM radio
in the US, what killed FM radio is the death of independent stations with local DJs, replaced by nationwide corporate homogeneity
May I suggest KEXP? Lister powered radio station. They have many unique shows throughout the week focusing on all sorts of genres. KEXP is broadcast in Seattle on 90.3FM, and coming to the Bay Area on 92.7FM in 2024. You can also listen live online at https://kexp.org/, and they also keep their last two weeks of programming on their archive here: https://www.kexp.org/archive/.
There's also Pacifica radio https://pacificanetwork.org which has a few stations around the country, but including WBAI https://wbai.org which has had a hacker-themed and hacker-led show on the air regularly since 1989. https://2600.com/offthehook/archive_ra.html
Google kills products every year. It also should not be a surprise to anyone that tech have an expiration date.
They do. As an example, over time older/weaker versions of TLS are gradually phased out. It's now difficult/impossible to access many websites from outdated devices without using a special proxy.
Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft also regularly remove features from their consoles retroactively. You buy a subscription for access to them - and telecom networks - not the right to use them forever
But that is not the same because radio spectrum is a very limited resource and those old uses are preventing newer uses. So the very limited bands of RF can only gain new uses say once per generation, as old FM radio users die out? Is that really a good trade-off?
FM radios are built into cars, hi-fi receivers etc. – things that people sometimes use for decades and more. Unlike for TVs, you also can't just add a set-top box to a car, for example.
That said, I don't understand what's so hard about just running both digital and analog in parallel for 20 or even 30 years. This would create an incentive to upgrade to the new, digital standard (better quality, more programming etc.) without outright cutting millions of people and their legacy devices off.
The US arguably did a better job transitioning to digital radio by using a digital system (HD radio) that seamlessly falls back to an analog AM or FM signal, and they have more constraints in terms of broadcast licensing restrictions than most other countries.
> Imagine if Apple or Google were retroactively removing a feature. The shitstorm would be outrageous.
Is this sarcasm? Just in case it is not:
Are any of those examples of removing a feature from a hardware device, which to me seemed to be the point of the parent. They're comparing car entertainment/GPS systems with phones.
Maybe 12 years ago, I had a device with sideloading that allowed me to run Plex (genuinely used for photo viewing). NowTV removed side-loading via a forced update and thus removed the principle reason I bought that device rather than another. Bought a FireTV stick after that and downloaded Plex from their appstore.
@Longhanks wasn't specifically talking about hardware. They said "Maybe don't try to shut down public services that millions of people actually rely on" and implied Google wouldn't do such a thing.
Google did exactly this when it shut down Google Reader in 2013. Feedly saw an influx of 3 million new users in the two weeks following the shutdown.
https://web.archive.org/web/20170721090528/https://blog.feed...
They've definitely bricked hardware before (e.g. Stadia, likely Jamboard).
Some devices are very hard or expensive to replace. EV: car infotainment systems.
Why these haven't been modular from the start is beyond belief anyway. It shouldn't cost more than 50€ for a new mobile data/phone uplink module, and yet, some manufacturers want the entire unit to be exchanged...
Not long before the 3G voice gets disabled too so the spectrum can get reused.
Yeah, I'd be surprised if that didn't happen eventually - 2G is already completely phased out here in Australia and all the networks are shutting down their 3G networks this year, so VoLTE/VoNR are the only options now. Surely that will happen eventually in the UK also?
The topic of the article is a 3G shutdown in the UK. It's in the headline!
The second paragraph mentions that 2G will be around for a decade or so longer, so that's the route voice will take.
3G is what's being shut down, so yes, that will go away very soon.
> Furthermore, the study also reveals 21% of those with a 3G handset aren’t willing to upgrade, and will simply continue to use their phone without internet connectivity.
My bet would be that these are mostly devices given to children to watch Youtube and what-not.
> However, calls and texts will continue to work despite the 3G switch off, as 2G won’t be fully switched off until 2033 the latest. This is because 2G is still used for critical infrastructure, including legacy connectivity solutions that typically have a longer product life.
Is it really that much overhead to keep 2G networks operating? It's very difficult to get behind any type of cellular technology when tomorrow it could be turned off.
Are there that many smartphones that are actually capable of running YT and have a access to a version of Android/iOS that’s still supported and are 4g only?
iPhone 5 was the first to support 4G and I’m not sure the 4s or 4 are really suitable for watching YT these days?
I think it's been fairly clear that people don't limit themselves to OS's that are still supported, and if you remove that condition from your question, I think the answer would be "yes".
> I think the answer would be "yes".
Hardly. Good luck running non-supported OS’s on iOS devices. So all of the old iphones and ipads are out.
Even on Android only a tiny statistically irrelevant proportion would both with this.
I suspect the mention of OSs that are still supported implied they weren't talking about non-supported but no longer supported OSs. So nothing exotic, just the normal OS on the device but stuck at the old version which was the final one released for it.
I have a 3G device still able to watch YT and a very old Kindle Fire that has NewPipe [1] installed for watching YT in bed (whilst my phone is on charge).
I don't see why not either - if the device was capable of H264 when it was released, why not now?
> Is it really that much overhead to keep 2G networks operating?
Network spectrum, perhaps? Once 2G is switched off that spectrum can be repurposes for other stuff, and it's a finite resource.
It's more that it's a completely different technological paradigm. 2G is deeply based on ideas of circuit switching, not just on the radio link, but also in the core network.
It's possible to emulate all that at various levels, but that doesn't come for free (in terms of complexity, hardware, and spectrum). Maybe in 10 years it'll be cheap enough that it'll just be done in the spare cycles of some 6G or 7G SDR network, though, if that's worth the extra spectral inefficiency.
I agree with the general sentiment but 2g was launched in 1991. Turned off "tomorrow" seems like a bit of an exaggeration. 3g has also been available for 2 decades.
> [..] but 2g was launched in 1991.
For me that's the value - a low bandwidth network that is reliable and continues to be supported.
The joys of mandatory obsolescence. Forcing handset churn is environmentally irresponsible. Maybe it is time for landlines to get SMS so people don't have to rely on mobile infrastructure? 5am sentiment but it'd be nice.
There's only a limited amount of space in the airwaves. Either old stuff gets turned off, or you can't add any new stuff.
I agree that mandatory obsolescence is a bad thing, but the first 4G networks went online in 2009 and are now 15 years old. Dropping support for >10-year-old handsets isn't great, but definitely understandable. If you're mad at anyone, it should be the companies who keep selling 3G-only handsets until this very day.
Killing 3G for the sake of... what exactly? Nothing else is really using that space and literally 2.5+ million people seem content with the service.
It it not more the producers and sellers of 3G handsets that should be blamed if they kept selling 3g phones after the end date for 3G was announced?
Many years ago, Sprint used to have a "text to landline" feature on their network. You could send an SMS from your phone and then their server would dial the landline and use a speech synthesizer to read out the text.
From my experience in the UK most telecoms have the same system, although I've only ever used it by accident and each time it left the person on the other end confused.
At one point BT hired Tom Baker to use his voice on their TTS system. I'm sure more people would use it if they kept his voice: https://youtu.be/aFsOhJgCSpw
Actually I'm pretty sure that exists in the UK too, but nobody I know uses a landline any more. My parents have one, but they use their mobiles more often than not.
Usually I would agree with you on the mandatory obsolescence thing but useful radio spectrum is a finite resource and the newer technologies are far more efficient both with spectrum utilisation and with power consumed. This is one of those cases where moving forward just makes sense.
Continuously sustaining the infrastructure rather than phasing it out has to have higher environmental expenses at some point. We might be even already past it?
The amount of client devices that would need to be replaced is only declining.
Landlines are being taken away by 2025.
I wasn't aware of this — I don't live in Britain, and wouldn't use a landline if I did — but I will check my parents aren't worried about it. It looks like their existing DECT phone will just plug in to the router.
https://www.which.co.uk/reviews/broadband/article/digital-vo...
There are plenty of areas without real landlines already. Maintaining aging copper infrastructure simply isn't worth the money, so your "landline" is now a SIP connection turned into analog by your modem.
Walkways in 2026, paper and pencils in 2027.
Relying on pools to get the data doesn’t seem very reliable. Phone carriers should have good numbers on how many users connect using 3G form base station logs. But may be they have no incentive to share because it could create pressure to delay 3G sunset.
3G has been recently switched off in the most (or all by now?) part of Hungary. I have thought that the bands get reused for 4G, but no change so far. Probably the remaining 2G occupies the same bands or whatever. Or they have gone with 5G, while all the providers banish prepaid users from using 5G, so thanks for nothing. Anyway, the biggest downside is that where the 4G coverage sucks, I'm seeing the nightmarish EDGE on my phone instead of HSDPA+. And it happens way too many times... Sometimes it happens while just passing a corner in the streets, and sometimes it takes too much time for the phone to recover to 4G+.
Ah, so this is what happened! I visit the villages next to the border near Bratislava often. I used to have no connectivity issues there, but now I get 2G first (which is almost unusable) and if I'm lucky I eventually connect to 4G.
Yeah here in Spain too, still can't get 5G on prepay. It's not like it's new anymore.. Pretty annoying. I really don't want a contract.
simyo supposedly will have prepaid 5G by the end of this month.
Ah ok, thanks! Not really a fan of MVNOs though.
But I guess Orange won't be far behind then.
I wonder why some countries are shutting down 3G but are keeping 2G around for several more years (UK, Germany), while others do the opposite, and yet others can get away with turning off both and going 4G/5G only (like the US).
Maybe it's a function of what type of M2M devices were rolled out most commonly in a country? For example, parking meters and vending machines often communciate via SMS in Germany; that works on 2G, so they might not even have a 3G modem.
On the other hand, I've seen a mobile payment terminal with a built-in 3G modem (but no LTE) that basically became obsolete with the 3G shutdown, since it falls back to GPRS which is hopelessly overloaded and/or just too slow for applications not geared towards it.
It is kind sad and funny at the same time, that in Germany I run around with 3G in major cities, which I have had in China in the middle of nowhere in probably better quality, 5 years ago.
All three networks have disabled 3G access in 2021, as far as I know.
To put in a little context. First 4G iPhone was iPhone 5, released on Sep 2012. 4G here is straightly LTE+ and not anything else. And the first 4G enabled Smartphone was released in 2010 by HTC.
By 2015. All Smartphone from major manufacture, including Apple has a top to bottom LTE capable Line Up.
i.e If the phone is 3G only, it is either very old or specifically designed for Voice and SMS only aka old Nokia non-smart phone.
> The survey also reveals 13% of people are unaware if their phone actually supports 4G or 5G
Include me in that. I have an old phone with a discount SIM installed. I only use it for certain international calls. Wikipedia and elsewhere describe it as "GSM / HSPA+ / LTE", and then explain that LTE "is also called 3.95G and has been marketed as 4G LTE and Advanced 4G" etc.
When network operators or phone manufacturers say 4G, they usually mean LTE, yes.
> Furthermore, the study also reveals 21% of those with a 3G handset aren’t willing to upgrade, and will simply continue to use their phone without internet connectivity.
I would guess that a large subset of those handsets are for 'emergency' use. Phones kept in car glove boxes and hand bags and rarely or infrequently used and never for internet.
a yes, the great tech-poor divide nobody cares when talking about digital central bank currencies or digital government etc.
I think the solution in all these cases isn't to make sure that everything works without id, without smartphone, with cash etc. It's to ensure everyone has access to technology, id, banks and so on.
Like voting. Yes it's a democracy problem if you have historically made it difficult or less likely for some groups to have ID, to suddenly require it. But it's not a democratic problem to require ID after first ensuring everyone has free and easy access to ID, and actually have the ID.
>the great tech-poor divide nobody cares
in the US, mentally ill drug addicted homeless people living on the street generally have smartphones
I suspect that in the developed world age is a better predictor than financial means of whether someone has an internet-connected smartphone, given how cheap smartphones can be these days.
That said, I still think that "freedom from tech" is an important social issue, regardless of how society tends to be divided on it.
You do not have to interact with the government or the central bank via these new technologies, the same way you do not have to interact with them via email or phone, since you always have the free option to do your business in person. Although obviously it is a much less convenient way to do so, but convenience isn't a right, and having more money is mostly about living more comfortably and conveniently (past the point at which you can cover your basic needs, which most democratic countries cover with their social systems).
In democracies, the second any interaction with a public institution mandates some kind of technology, without providing an alternative, I would assume a basic free option would have to be provided to legal resident of such country.
In Belgium, most (big) banks are downscaling physical servicepoints so much it sometimes is almost impossible for people to choose to do business in person.
In think in 10 years you will have almost no real bank tellers anymore. That's no problem for most of the people, but I don't think that the right thing to do in the broader sense. There are lots of (technology) illiterate people that needs some kind of physical service.
In Belgium, I've noticed a general "de-servicing" across industries.
- Bank offices (and ATMs) disappearing. - Post offices disappearing. - Customer service disappearing (phone especially) in lieu of the always useless "check our frequently asked questions / forums" - Cashiers disappearing in lieu of self checkout.
I'm sure it's not just Belgium. The problem appears to be that there's no big enough incentive to service the long-tail (P90) once most day-to-day stuff can be done by yourself, usually digital. Service as collateral damage of efficiency.
Should we ask the government to ensure that any company providing critical services (banking, telecommunications, distributing food) offers a minimum level of service? Because without outside incentive I only see us going further down this road.
It's not just Belgium, it's everywhere now.
Though I must I admit I much prefer self-checkout when shopping. The queues are much faster.
It is matter of organization.
There's a single queue to multiple self-checkout machines. If one is stuck, you won't notice.
For classic checkout, there are queues to cashier 1:1. If one is stuck, especially the one you are waiting in, you will definitely notice.
This, together with limiting the number of open classic checkouts, nudges you toward the self-checkout. KPIs then show, that they are popular and cheaper, so continue will rollout.
Technology illiteracy, absenting a learning difficulty or other mental condition, should be inexcusable in 2034 and we should not force the state or businesses to cope with it.
Part of me thinks it's inexcusable now for people under a certain age. If you're 70 today in a developed country, you've had the internet for 20 years and a smartphone for at least 10. That's plenty of time.
I think people should be able to live without internet, if that's what they choose. Just as people can live without a TV. There's tons of reasons why someone might not have internet (permanently or temporarily) ranging from financials to personal choice.
And it's not about "illiteracy" as far as I'm concerned, it's about wanting to talk to an actual human being, which is becoming harder and harder. My bank card doesn't work. No idea why. I went to the office: they told me they can't help me and to ring a number. I've rung that number a bunch of times: no one answers. I guess they're busy... I have a workaround by being able to transfer money to a friend's bank account (at the in-store kiosk, because internet banking also doesn't work) and withdrawing it from that, but pff...
And yes, I'll change banks when I can, but I'm not sure it really better anywhere else. Overall, adding more tech to these kind of things tends to make it worse once you're outside of the standard happy path. I also wasn't able to get one of those "COVID passport" thingies a few years ago: I moved back to my home country to get the vaccine, but then I wasn't registered correctly, so couldn't use the app, in spite of having the proof that I got when I got the shot. I was a teeny bit outside the "happy path" and ... sucks to be you.
There's tons of exceptional situations; someone might lose their phone and lose access to their bank account that way, and they may not have the money to buy a new phone right that minute. Simple fool-proof backup solutions are needed unless you're okay with excluding a lot of people (often people already in less-than-ideal circumstances – i.e. not the people typically posting here).
> I think people should be able to live without internet, if that's what they choose. Just as people can live without a TV.
Would you pass a law to force businesses to maintain a level of service that must include people without internet? It will have to be a law I'm afraid, if left to the profit motive alone then companies will not include these people, as we are seeing happen.
Also, I wouldn't liken living without internet to being without a TV, obviously I understand why you would say that, but when it comes to living in a modern society I'd say it's more like living without pen & paper or a postal service.
The only business that you need is a bank. They're subject to all sorts of special regulations already including the inability to refuse customers for a basic account in some countries. Other exceptions are things like the post office and such.
Special laws for a regular businesses isn't needed.
Having a physical presence is a competitive advantage. It's the reason some people stick with Chase or their local credit union in lieu of someone else who is online-only with a higher interest rate. Perhaps in a while most banks will decide it's just not worth the expense anymore, but I don't think it's a foregone conclusion.
I've never even been inside a brach of any bank I actually bank at. I've been in a bank to actually do banking like twice in my life, both times to get large bill withdrawals for in person cash vehicle purchases. And I'd just prefer there to be ATMs near me that support bills larger than 20s, why wait until the bank opens and stand in line.
I truly don't understand why a regular person would bother going in to a bank in-person. It just seems like a worse experience compared to doing your banking whenever, wherever.
I understand business banking and what not gets more complicated and it can be helpful having a team to talk to, but a normal person banking is almost always pretty dang basic.
That's why accessibility needs to be constantly advocated.
We should never design services only for the needs of the majority. There are lots of people with all kinds of disabilities -mental and physical- that we need to cater for.
That's what makes our society a better, more loving society.
HSBC experience in a smaller UK city - the staff in branch have to call the same phone number as one would call from home. They do have some ability to authorise actions, but barely. Perhaps they checked ID, I don't recall.
The company line is "you don't need to visit the branch ever" which is strange as they keep having to ask us to do things at the branch.
There's no counter service, no business staff, nothing except people to intermediate using the machines or using phone banking.
That's ok. It's eating your own dogfood, and also "being there" for people that really need it. Much better than a robotmenu on a phone. :)
I agree that it would suck for tech non-savvy people, but at the same time the literacy of general population with any technology naturally improves as time passes. Of course, while there is still a big enough chunk of people that do need a require (or just prefer) a particular way of communicating, it should be generally available at a good-enough level of convenience. The key is of course to only start scaling it back at the appropriate time, at which there is so few people that they can be considered outliers (and I mean actual, statistical outliers, not 'whoever the government doesn't consider important enough').
But all of this is of course just like my opinion man. Just a very interesting topic to think about.
> since you always have the free option to do your business in person.
The free option can cost a lot. Digitalization is pushed because the government want to reduce "first level support". You get to talk to robots, for hours and then get an appointment in months.
> In democracies, the second any interaction with a public institution mandates some kind of technology, without providing an alternative, I would assume a basic free option would have to be provided to legal resident of such country.
When I applied for my Irish passport, the only way to inquire about the process of my application was via Twitter. (They had something that superficially looked like a contact widget on their website, but it was nonfunctional)
Yeah, Twitter and the "WebChat" were the only options there when I was applying and the webchat didn't work. Glad to see they've added a phone number now.
That sounds pretty shocking. Was that during the covid lockdowns or is that just standard procedure?
It was pre-covid, although during a time of particularly high applications (post-Brexit).
> the second any interaction with a public institution mandates some kind of technology, without providing an alternative, I would assume a basic free option would have to be provided to legal resident of such country
This is a strange assumption given it has zero historical basis and is, by and large, a modern invention.
Depends on how you define 'technology'. When the government needs you to fill out a form, you can go to their office and they provide the printed form and a pen. Paper and printing are human inventions, therefor I would consider them 'technology' for purposes of this debate.
That said, I know it's a bit of a leap from paper to internet access. In my country at least, I can say confidently that there is a law mandating free access to government services. At least such services that you are required by law to interact with.
> you can go to their office and they provide the printed form and a pen
Getting to a government office was historically a barrier. It still is in much of the world.
> there is a law mandating free access to government services
To be clear, I think this is a good thing. I just don't think it's reasonable to assume it to be true.
> Getting to a government office was historically a barrier.
That is a very good point, and something I did not include in my logic. Thanks for pointing that out.
It's actually wild to see, across history, how cost of travel was used as a gating mechanism. The example that comes to mind is the Roman Tribal Assembly [1]. While on paper it was egalitarian, in practice only the elites could afford to keep criss-crossing Italy to elect low-ranking Senators.
Are things like marriage licenses, driving licenses, registering land ownership, passports all free-gratis to acquire then? Which country?
You can't in general attend government offices in the UK. You can't rock up with your tax return, or apply for a passport, say. You can get paper forms from the Post Office, or sent out from the gov service itself (sometimes, some are digital only) and most libraries (and some other community centres) offer help to access online services.
>>you always have the free option to do your business in person.
I guess you don't actually live in the UK then. There is nowhere to go "in person" to interact with HMRC for instance. You can still send them paper forms for most things, but the result will be saved in your online HMRC profile, so you haven't bypassed anything.
>>I would assume a basic free option would have to be provided to legal resident of such country.
You'd assume wrong. The argument is that all of these options are "free" so what are you complaining about.
Same thing is happening with banks - branches are closing down across the country in droves, with a lot of people reporting that they now have to travel 1h+ to their nearest branch if they need to do something in person(and annoyingly banks themselves force that - you can't deposit a cheque over £500 online for instance, you have to do it in person for some idiotic reason)
The lesser known Obama phone program got devices to 20 million Americans in order to facilitate digital interaction.
What you're talking about is the Lifeline program, which was established in 1985 and expanded to include cell phones under the Bush administration. The changes took effect later during the Obama administration, and so it got the nickname "Obama phone" by some. But he didn't have anything to do with it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lifeline_(FCC_program)
What you've linked is some unaffiliated site, the official website of the administrator of the program is here: https://www.lifelinesupport.org/
TIL, thank you!
Don't we get enough Internet on the desktop?
What's a desktop?
(that is to say, majority of people only have a phone these days)
I really, extremely doubt that's the case (at least in Western countries). Practically everyone I know (including elderly relatives) at least have a laptop as well as a phone, and quite a few have a dedicated desktop. And that's only counting personal devices.
End-user device is one thing, but much worrying is if any critical system still using only 3G.
Critical systems are using or will fallback to 2G, which will stay with us forever. The bandwidth is not required there anyway.
2G services were shut down in Australia back in 2016-2017.
I am still on 3G, the provider keeps calling me and asking me to switch to their new plan. I just keep telling them that their current plan I am on is the world's best and there is no way I would switch to anything else.
Yes I'm trying to work out how we managed to survive without a 2G fallback here in Oz. 3G is shutting down by the end of this year.
Is the UK not going to sunset 2G? Here in the states the last 2G towers are disappearing here in a couple of months, and much of the network has been gone for years.
2g will be shutting down in 2033, 3g will be shutting down around 2025. a lot of people have 2g phones
IIUC, 2G and 3G both require a fairly sizable block of spectrum to operate. If you have three carriers all operating minimum width 2G service, it adds up. 5G has some sort of coexistance story with 4G so in the future when LTE is being killed, they can let it live a bit and only waste spectrum as its used.
Certainly not forever, but maybe a couple of years.
At work we use Sierra Wireless modems which are only 3G + 4G. So in practice only 4G in many countries already now or in a couple of months.
The Netherlands close down 2G but keep 3G. (I am being told, not living or working there.)
parking meters, apparently.
I won’t say parking meters are critical!
They are to the companies or local administrations making money from them. City councils have some leverage on mobile operators by the means of national governments.
In general, each industry or other organizations hit by changes will be vocal against those changes. Countries implement them when everybody is OK with them or when the organizations not OK with them are politically too weak to matter.
While all you say is very true, that does not make them critical. Critical stuff is what those people/org will buy with the money: clean water, food, antibiotics…
In a harsh environment (war, crisis, epidemic…) you can give up paying the parking but you still need to eat. This is critical.
They've just removed parking meters in a lot of places near me. Parking apps or pay by phone only.
Absolutely tragic…don’t they know it’s within cultural norms to switch phones every 2 years?
LTE is 10 years old.
You can still use any phone supporting 2G (which is essentially all 3G phones) for phone calls and texting. If you need fast data, you'll need to upgrade – and chances are your 10-year old phone isn't very good at displaying modern websites anyway. There are root CA certificates that have expired since some of these phones received their last software update, for example.
It’s a positive thing, tbh. I wish the number was bigger. Our desire to switch to the hottest new thing has a significant environmental impact. People don’t need the fastest available mobile internet for checking mails or streaming videos at 1 Mbps. They don’t need the fastest PCs for using Google docs. We don’t need massive pickup trucks for doing grocery runs or even hauling passengers around. It’s fair for anyone to disagree, but I wanted to put this thought out there.
I see environmental impact of electronics frequently mentioned but, gotta be honest, I'm not sure I really buy that there is a major environmental impact there. Even if someone is getting a brand new phone every year, that's how much plastic and silicon? In a year?
Compare that to the daily disposable plastics just for food. Or the amount of plastics for shipping and storing goods.
It’s not just the materials in the phone itself. It’s the whole production process.
Operating slower RF equipment isn't just affecting the single end user though. That user is affecting everyone else wanting to share that spectrum.
I get the argument, but the networks seem to be operating quite inefficiently anyway. They have been given a tonne of spectrum over the years and yet they don't tend to address areas of concern over coverage. They could put in more small cells to improve coverage, but they just want to maximise the utilisation their wide area coverage frequencies. I live in an area where you'd expect fantastic coverage, close to a globally significant city and yet not too dense population. A 5G speed test will often get you DSL speeds. Leaving a few channels, or even allocating guard bands to low power 3G seems like it won't significantly impact the networks and at worse inspire them to invest better in their networks. Scarcity drives innovation afterall.