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Wait a second, sorry if I am ignorant on the matter but... carriers _whitelist_ phones in America? That sounds absolutely insane to me (as a European). Is there a particular reason why they do that? and also, is there any reason why it is allowed? I don't think I've ever heard of anything like this over here in my country. And even though I'm not a law person, I'm pretty sure something like that would either be illegal or just disaster for the company.
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A friend of mine uses AT&T and they shut off service to the SIM saying it was due to AT&T no longer offering 3G. My friend pointed out that the phone hadn't used anything but 4G, or LTE, in the last few years, and the phone didn't require 3G. AT&T suggested it was due to the move to 5G, and the phone wasn't 5G compatible. My friend pointed out that AT&T doesn't offer 5G coverage in the area. AT&T claimed the phone would not work. That was not the case. My friend explained that the phone would work with every band offered by AT&T in the area, and asked the rep to say so if it was simply a matter of AT&T prohibiting the phone. AT&T then returned service to the phone. Unfortunately, the rep insisted that all telcos would follow suit, and there would be no phones used without 5G compatibility soon.
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Some of the earliest LTE devices did data over LTE and voice over 3G. Notably this applies to the iPhone 5s does not support voice over LTE - which you commonly see on Android devices as VoLTE. There’s a variety of other devices in the the same situation. The user experience on these devices often does not make it clear that audio is going over 3G. This has caused many people to get notified of incompatible devices that they thought would work. The devices do continue to work, for now, but as 3G is shut down in a staggered fashion, they’ll seem like they work until the owner tries to make a phone call or realizes they haven’t received a call in a while.
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> there would be no phones used without 5G compatibility soonWith low level of obstruction, the distance range of 5G is half a kilometer. The distance range of 4G is ~30km. 5G covers roughly one fiftieth of the distance of 4G. If they phased out 4G, people still owning a mobile telephony device would stop receiving service when out of urban areas?
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>With low level of obstruction, the distance range of 5G is half a kilometer. Um, no. I regularly connect to a N41 sector broadcasting over 12km away and pull 300-400mbit off it. That's midband 5G, which most consider medium distance. AT&T is running 3G on 850mhz which they can put a 5G N5 carrier on. This can do that kind of range with obstructions, but is less spectrum so will congest easier like T-Mobile's 600mhz N71 carrier. EDIT: WCDMA (3G) was always the weakest for coverage. Geographic cell sizes actually shrink as more users connect https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cell_breathing_(telephony)
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No, 5G have lots of range. Its no worse than 4G, it just depends on the frequencies that the carrier have rolled it out on. If its rolled out on 26ghz its bad in range.
Sub 6 GHZ 5G rollout is as good or better than 4G on the same frequencies. My carrier have rolled out 5G on 700 MHZ and I am seeing better coverage than their 4G network.
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What you're talking about is 5G mmWave. Previous longer frequencies remain usable with 5G. Last I looked into it mmWave was a tiny portion of 5G deployments, as it only makes in very dense urban areas due to the reasons you noted. Of course those mmWave stations presumably still support the longer frequencies because why wouldn't you if the goal is to fit tons of clients onto one station.
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That still offers very little explanation about what their motives could be. Do they just want to generate some money, or are there actual concerns about backwards compatibility?
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There are only three things that matter: Location, Location, Location. The higher your resolution is the more you can be sold for.
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It is not just "old" or 3G-only phones, it is any phone that is not explicitly on their whitelist. I have been using a f(x)tec pro1 for years on 4G+VoLTE on their network, and got the same text message saying they would terminate my account if I did not get a different phone. I decided to lay low and moved my sim into a supported phone with the intention of letting the dust settle white I prepare to port my number to t-mobile (they have by far the worse service in my area, but seem to be the only US provider allowing the pro1 to be activated). I still have an inkling of hope that I will be able to move my sim back to the pro1 after whoever is responsible for the 3G shutdown gets their bonus and they stop going after unsupported devices aggressively.
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What do you mean by the "only US provider allowing" ? Blacklisting old phones is a thing every US telcom is doing ?
I'm european, I know the US is really NOT into consumer rights, but still, this is a massive FU to phones users who want to keep their phone for a good 2-3 years, and pushes for a massive electronic waste.
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It's not blacklisting, it's WHITElisting which is much worse - all the phones not explicitly sold by AT&T or otherwise approved will not work. So you pretty much don't have a free market choice of your device despite it being compatible with the network.
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I am using a OnePlus 6, still working perfectly fine, supports 4G and VoLTE ("HD Voice")[+]. AT&T kicked it off their network because it is not on their whitelist (The OnePlus 6T is). They sent me a branded LG Prime 2 as a replacement of a "equivalent" phone. It is actually a budget phone, not supporting 5G, and not even on AT&T's approved devices list (it seems they added it now, but last year it wasn't). Forum users reported that customer service can whitelist an IMEI. They did not for me. So I switched to the T-Mobile network. From my international SIM now I get a message from their roaming partner AT&T saying that voice calls will not work. T-Mobile is sunsetting 3G as well in July 2022, they sent me a text saying that they "think" that my phone is compatible. The decision of AT&T to not support my phone is not technical. [+] It has 2 SIM card slots, something that seems to be impossible to get in the US. I think only one of the 2 slots fully supports LTE.
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>[+] It has 2 SIM card slots, something that seems to be impossible to get in the US. The 6T and 8T has 2 SIM slots in their retail unlocked versions. T-Mobile 6T and 8T versions can be flashed to this config (but you will need to buy a new sim tray to hold both cards). It's also pretty common now to see phones that have esim and a single sim slot in the US.
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This. Was in the same boat over a year ago when AT&T started SMS spamming about 3G sundown plans on one of my prepaid phones (Blackberry Key2) flagged as "incompatible"; to be sure, the older KEYone and Priv models are apparently whitelisted because AT&T had sold and directly supported those models at some time in the past. Got so annoyed by the recurring, persistent warnings and no reasonable explanation why this 4G VoLTE phone would be sucking hind tit on their network in the near future that I ported the number to T-Mobile on a random Sunday afternoon (reduced monthly bill too) and never looked back. If the UX leading up to disconnect was anything like mine, I'm honestly not sure why this event is catching so many AT&T customers off guard.
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>I still have an inkling of hope that I will be able to move my sim back to the pro1 after whoever is responsible for the 3G shutdown gets their bonus and they stop going after unsupported devices aggressively. ATT is just about one of worst telco company around. It doesn't surprise me they are doing stuff like this for bonus or whatever reasons. They have in the past selectively blocked email, calls before (for their customers without notices) and now phones. If you can do NOT use ATT as a telco provider.
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> I still have an inkling of hope that I will be able to move my sim back to the pro1 after whoever is responsible for the 3G shutdown gets their bonus you're missing the point at&t is shutting down 3g towers because pretty soon they won't be legal anymore no cell company can service you whether they want to or not. that spectrum is being turned over to 5g devices mid next year. https://www.wired.com/story/3g-service-sunset-what-it-means/
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Also the entire Europe is sunsetting 3G, some networks have already done so and many have announced their planned dates up to 2025. They're calling 4G LTE the much better alternative - from phones to IoT and whatnot.
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Wow the telcos in the US are f'ed, who cares what device you use on your account and when it eventually stops working because there's no 2G or 3G you fix that by getting a new phone with 4G or 5G. Disabling phones because they're not "approved" is stupid but hey, US telco and stupidity are synonyms
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Yeah it is insane that this is a thing. Nothing comparable happens in Australia for either phone service or ISPs.
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> Beginning March 1, 2022, we sent cancellation notices informing session-based customers (AT&T PREPAID) that their account will be canceled on or after April 19, 2022, if they have not taken steps to upgrade to a compatible device.> What type of device are you using? Customers using 3G and non-VoLTE devices are subject to immediate disconnect as we sunset the 3G network This sounds like the competitor to the records for lunacy in history: one owned device¹ will not support their service - and they will cease the contract?! [Edit: they have closed the accounts...] [Edit: sorry, but I believe I must reformulate the above before skimmers drill in their mind a wrong piece of information I slipped in out of confusion. Please see the further exchanges below with corrections and clarifications.] (¹And how are they entitled to know what it is - it is not a trivial right to peek.)
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3G is not only an internet service, it is also a voice service. Given that at&t closed down their 2G network, closing down their 3G network as well would mean that those phones would be unusable even for telephony purposes.
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Right, it's been a few years since I re-read the Tanenbaum, and I got confused over the technical capabilities. But the core issue remains: they have disabled the SIMs, they have reappropriated the numbers of paying customers. From one of their employees: «While at the store they can reactivate your account with your old number if it is still available» When one buys petrol, how can it the seller's business which engines will see it. In the basicmost terms: if the connection technologies of some devices stop being supported by the infrastructure, what is expected is that the subscriber will deal with it in their own terms - not that the contract is ceased!
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> From one of their employees: «While at the store they can reactivate your account with your old number if it is still available» What the fuck? Here in Germany, customers have the freedom of porting their number over to a new provider 30 days after contract cancellation [1], precisely to prevent such scenarios. [1] https://dejure.org/gesetze/TKG/59.html
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Yes, I agree that disabling the SIM cards makes little sense. I wonder why they did that. Perhaps they think that if customers haven't upgraded their phones yet it's because they don't intend to.
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I thought all GSM telcos are required to work with any device you put the SIM card into? At least that was the case in the LTE days. Has the law changed? With the FCC getting so politicized I wouldn’t be surprised, but it’s still news to me that any carrier is allowed to have a whitelist.
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Pretty sure the only service all carriers are required to provide regardless of whether a SIM card is installed is 911 service.
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Google forces to use 2FA with SMS authentication, then AT&T disables phone number. Great.
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I'm on an MVNO that uses AT&T service, Redpocket. I had a phone (LG G8) that WAS on the whitelist and AT&T dissabled it after the 3G shutdown. I was without service for over a month until I gave up and bought a newer phone. Customer service had no clue what to do.
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I read about the change several months before and migrated from a OnePlus 5 to a Pixel 3a. I am on an MVNO, so I ultimately decided to migrate back to Verizon. The only reason that I was on AT&T at all was a larger diversity of supported devices. VoLTE has really put an end to that for me, as I'm on LineageOS.
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> VoLTE has really put an end to that for me, as I'm on LineageOS. This is extremely device dependent. Out of officially supported LineageOS models, the general rule of thumb has been VoLTE that works in stock firmware on Motorola or Oneplus will also work in LOS. Samsung won't as they have a proprietary implementation. AT&T goes a step further than just blocking devices that don't register on IMS and also runs IMEI whitelists so almost all imported phones will not work on their network.
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Yup, choice in phones was one of AT&T's only advantages over Verizon (remember when their phone selection was literally the Island Of Misfit Phones?) and that's gone now.
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I left AT&T back in 2012 or so when they started to flag and reclassify my plan on every import model I bought. Prior to that, T-Mobile was almost purely urban and AWS band supporting phones were a little obscure. But that's not an issue today and now I can import whatever. I still have a few active SIM cards supporting GSM-only operation if I feel like using an old phone from 2005. (I have a sony ericsson w810i that Google's WAP site still works on, the oldest phone I tried within past year was a t68i but data wouldn't work, just calls/sms)
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I think the real reason is shutting down of the 3G network in order to support 5G roll outs and more LTE. This is a kin to raising arms over the EOL support of Windows Vista.
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I had this happen - they're disabling the SIM and associated line, whether or not it's actually being currently used in a 3G device and whether or not the service is currently functional. When I talked to the AT&T folks in store, they indicated that it was happening even on 4G capable devices that weren't bought from AT&T and therefore were unlisted in the system. It's simply being used as a driver for new phone purchases.
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> used as a driver for new phone purchases except they sent free phones to people who had 3g phones. They weren't super-new, but they were newer than the phones they were replacing.
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I can understand shutting down 3G network, but terminating accounts and phone numbers abruptly is unacceptable. Now SIM card doesn't even work in new phones.
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It's worth noting that many cheap android devices let you spoof the IMEI and other device identifiers. If so, just find someone else with the device you want to emulate and copy over the identifiers over. It's usually an app in the app list as "Set up Phone" or something - you type in the IMEI, hit save, and then reboot. Probably best to find someone not on the same network as you - many phone networks won't let two phones with the same IMEI connect at once. It's very useful in countries like Turkey which don't allow foreign phones. So you need to copy the IMEI of a local unless you want to buy a new phone.
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>It's worth noting that many cheap android devices let you spoof the IMEI and other device identifiers. Any devices this is going to work on will be old and will not support VoLTE. Modern smartphone SoC's (all the Qualcomm ones at least, which make up majority of US android devices) have the modem IMEI stored in memory that can't be modified, any guides on these devices are just about spoofing IMEI reported to android system, not to the network.
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ATT TAKE MY PAYMENT & TEXT ME, BUT THEY CANCEL MY SERVICE & PHONE # AFTER THIS. MY PHONE IS LG V30, BUT ATT STORY IS THIS PHONE NOT ACCEPT IN THEIR SYSTEM, SO THEY HAVE TO CANCEL.
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I have multiple friends who have left AT&T because of this. It seems to me they are shooting themselves in the foot.
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Rejoice, that at least you still get a basic-level-decent market! But that they arrived to that point suggests the contrary: overaccepting customers.
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AT&T made it apparent that acquiring/retaining customers by being a decent service wasn't a priority. Instead they acquired companies to bundle like Directv and got on the government Firstnet corporate welfare scheme.
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