alt Hacker News2G is hard to shut down, because it just works, and many of the core services and old phones rely on it. It will survive 5G, 6G, 7G an other Gs.
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We don't have it in the US, I remember being annoyed that there were no more cheap cellular modules for microcontrollers for a while.
2G also needs a tiny amount of spectrum in contrast to the newer standards, as it was designed almost exclusively for voice calls, where a few Kbps is sufficient for good quality speech. (And 64kbps, which is only 8KB/s, is considered "toll quality".)
Australia (2018), New Zealand (2018), US (2017), Iceland (2025), Switzerland have shut down 2G networks.
In Norway, Telia shut down 2G in 2025, but Telenor is holding out until the end of 2027.
In Sweden, Telia is holding until 2027, and all other telcos have already switched it off.
France is shutting down 2G this year.
So the 2G shutdown is a real thing.
4G is becoming the "baseline" and replacing 2G in many of those services, especially the "low energy" IoT implementations of LTE.
2G is being shutdown (or already has) in many countries and those old phones and core services will need to be replaced.