Last week, the UK Government announced a new plan which will affect all the major network providers in the country, EE, O2 and Three which will see the phasing out of the legacy 2G and 3G mobile phone networks, over the timeline of the next ten years or so. The plan is to reuse the spectrum and equipment to better boost the existing 4G and up and coming 5G networks.

The plan is to have the phase out done by 2033, it’ll help save power as those transmitters are being used and probably each and every day, less and less people will be using 2G and 3G, as 4G is well spread in the UK now. It’ll also free up some valuable spectrum which can be used for backhaul as well as for serving phones etc.

However, some of the mobile operators are looking to turn off 3G faster than 2G – as the older technology can be used as a useful fallback in more remote areas as well as cheaper phones, which don’t have 3G or 4G. For example, EE is looking to drop 3G by the end of 2023.