3 G Wireless is going Away

FrankB wrote:

I cant afford $1K or more for a fone with more features that I will never use. Or understand.

I can't either. Over two years ago, when I saw the writing on the wall, I bought a new 4G LG Android smartphone from my carrier for $40. It doesn't have a huge screen, but I don't browse or stream movies with it. My plan costs $20 a month with limited carryover data which I bank for emergencies. I use my phone for the unlimited talk and text that my plan provides. I also use it to store and use a bunch of files, such as inventories of my ~3,000 CDs, DVDs, and Blu-rays, as well as my ~20,000 books. I do most of my shopping for all of those items used at Goodwill, used bookstores, and music stores that carry used CDs and used video, and carrying full inventories keeps be from buying something that I already own. I am retired on a very tight budget and try not to waste money.

It's great if you have the money to replace the phone.  likely I'll just go back to landline. I cant afford $1K or more for a fone with more features that I will never use. Or understand.

FrankB wrote:

Thereby forcing the cell phone customers to spend hundreds of dollars buying new phones, like happened to me with T Mobile a few years back. Totally unacceptable, IMHO.
 What a racket!

You have a simple choice - give up on cell phones entirely.

Have you ever been inside a cell phone shelter? Have you ever had a loading study done on a tower, or specced a commercial genset? There are a lot of constraints limiting how many generations of phones the carriers can afford to support.

When the carriers began installing 5G I saw the writing on the wall and replaced my 3G phone with a 4G phone.

Thereby forcing the cell phone customers to spend hundreds of dollars buying new phones, like happened to me with T Mobile a few years back. Totally unacceptable, IMHO.
 What a racket!

This article is from Puget sound Checkbook

3G Wireless Service Will End in 2022, Stranding Millions of Mobile Devices
by Herb Weisbaum, The ConsumerMan
Last updated February 14, 2022

This year, U.S. wireless carriers will turn off their old 3G (third-generation wireless) networks to make room in their wireless spectrums for 4G and 5G traffic.
The first shutdown starts next week, when AT&T throws its switch on Feb. 22. T-Mobile will be up next, shutting down its 3G network by July 1 and Sprint’s 3G service (now a part of T-Mobile) by March 31. By June 30, T-Mobile will also end Sprint’s 4G LTE network. Verizon says its 3G service will go bye-bye by December 31, 2022.