alt Hacker NewsFunny enough its the tower that tells the cellphone modem which network is "better" and it does this in an unencrypted cell reselection message. So it is easy to force a phone to select 2G.
https://efforg.github.io/rayhunter/heuristics.html#lte-sib67...
Huh, I was going to say that this can't possibly be the case for the newer standards, but it seems like it really is the case even in 4G/LTE...
Hopefully devices at least ignore it when 2G is deactivated entirely, for those where that's possible.