When is 3G being shutdown?

Just to be clear:  we’re headed for a cell-pocalypse.    Any phone that isn’t VoLTE compatible will not be allowed to activate at end of year, and will cease to work when 3g shuts down.   If At&t can’t install software, or won’t just “allow it” as t-mobile does (and I don’t know how t-mo operates) there will be a lot of phones that won’t work anymore. All older iPhones and android, windows phones and non branded androids.  Travelers to the USA will have no service unless they rent or buy a phone here.   

I dumped all my non carrier phones except the 6t, which does work.  But my sisters family bought 1+ phones that don’t get VoLTE and may have to replace phones sooner than they planned. 

You still have 2 years at least of service with a 3G only flip phone.  Assuming the phone remains working and 3G doesn't degrade in your area.  The carriers tend to make repairs low priority for the older technology that is going away soon, leaving holes.

Unless you have a problem with your current cell phone, it is likely cheaper to just keep it rather than buy a new "flip" phone now that will just start to get older once you buy it.

I got rid of my landline last year and added a cheap Nokia 3G phone on the ATT network for my "home" number.  For when I needed to give out a number and didn't want to give out my regular cell number that I carry with me.

It was mentioned all the 4G flip phones available on eBay.  Unless they are ATT branded, they still use 3G for voice and not VoLTE.  Which is what will be needed when 3G is phased out.

At least iPhones support VoLTE.  At least back to the 6.  And when the 6 goes out of support later this year, all supported iPhones will work VoLTE on ATT.  At least the models sold in the US.

Yep, iOS devices get a "special" exception, they have a lot of marketing power.

Almost all mid-range and up (even quite a few low-end phones recently) have almost all supported VoLTE, for 5-ish years now...

Hopefully ATT will start to work towards enabling this, given the timing...

@kevink Good point though, about the eBay phones. A lot of these could and might work on ATT, as long as they have good band/frequency matching, but as to whether they will be enabled is a big unknown, unfortunately. 

Liked the drama here 🤣

@singleabman1963 wrote:

Liked the drama here 🤣

​I know, right?

I never thought I'd still see people complaining about smartphones in 2019. I've been working for major cell carriers for almost ten years, and I remember when smartphones were first introduced and having calls from customers yelling how they don't need data and would never use a smartphone.

I also would respectfully disagree with the OP who insists older people don't use smartphones. I have eighty-year-olds calling in about their iPhones which they use to FaceTime with their grandchildren, dictate emails with voice-to-text, keep track of their medication, and order Uber rides with.

I'm not saying everyone should have a smartphone. I've talked to people who can't even figure out how to turn their phone on or dial their voicemail. If that's you, put down the cell phone and walk away. But there's no age limit to smartphones, only stubbornness and fear of technology.

@QuarryRye Yep, 110%.  Most of my relatives, including my Mom, in her 80's, were stubborn about this.  Until they realized the "access" it gave them, getting/sending text-pics, showing their friends "shared pics", etc.

Once I showed her how the "speech to text" works, she "took off" on that, too, she uses it for the vast majority of texting and other data-entry, at this point, go figure.  There was some resistance, but once you show someone how easy it is to pull up the local weather, and get the hourly forecast, too, or some-such, things tend to "take off" from there, I think it's basic "human interest" at that point.

I think most people that are stubborn about this think that a "smartphone" means that you have to be a 'tech-ie", in order to use them, which couldn't be farther from the truth, except when things go wrong, on occasion ;-]

I just realized that an ELO concert we're going to requires a smartphone, in order to use the e-tickets (still not sure how I feel about the "implementation" side of it), which is interesting.  Without some sort of "smart device", the world is going to get pretty small, and leave some behind, in some (unfortunate, but unavoidable at this point) ways...

Everyone should keep a landline at home. Take it from me, the first thing to go down when any kind of incident hits is and will always be cell phones. Each site has a certain amount of capacity. History shows that when something is happening, people will overload the site(s) near that event, shutting down service. All sites also rely on a backbone to process traffic. If that goes down for whatever reason (anything from storms to what we call "backhoe fade", iow, the backbone cable/fiber gets dug up), any site using it goes down as well.

Cell phones are highly unreliable when things hit the fan. That's why police and fire don't use them for their primary communications, and seldom for secondary even.
In fact, not only do I still have land line, but I keep a couple of old style "ma bell" phones that require no external power. The phone companies have ***massive*** battery banks and generators. They can stay up for weeks, even months, as long as lines are up. Cell phone companies still have many, if not most, sites with no back-up power at all, or small battery banks that might last a few hours or so. There are many sites with generators, but again, those sites will become overloaded very quickly.

People will not "get" what you are saying if they are millennial, lol