AT&T Tells Customers To Upgrade Their Phones To Avoid Losing Voice Calls -- Two Years Early (9to5google.com) 119
There are countless stories of carriers trying to convince people they need a new phone, but this latest example from AT&T is especially worrying. From a report: Through an email going out to thousands of customers, AT&T is warning that those users need to upgrade their phones to avoid losing the ability to make voice calls. The problem? That won't happen for nearly two years. An email is being sent out to customers with a statement in bold that "your device is not compatible with the new network." This is referring to AT&T's plan to shut down its 3G network, still used by some devices for voice calls and data. When that happens, only phones that support VoLTE (voice over LTE) will be allowed on the network. AT&T's email lets customers know that their current phone isn't compatible with VoLTE, but without explaining that explicitly or, more importantly, mentioning that their phone will continue to work until February 2022!
2 Years is good (Score:5, Insightful)
2 years is good, not giving the date is bad. They're obviously trying to pad their numbers for the quarter from direct sales, but this would also help people avoid making mistakes in buying used phones that will be obsolete quickly.
Re:2 Years is good (Score:5, Interesting)
Nah, it's less evil than it sounds.
People are on 1 or 2 year contracts, so they are being sent emails if they are "still using" a non-VoLTE device, even if they are using a VoLTE device. This is because users don't typically update the IMEI if they buy a phone from a non-wireless company location, such as eBay, or directly from Apple.
People will be offered devices, often rubbish to keep them locked into those same contracts without any other benefit. It's not typically in your best interests to take a free device. Either get a direct upgrade to the device you have, or no deal.
Re: 2 Years is good (Score:3)
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The IMEI gets passed to the provider whenever you plug in a SIM card. Verizon gives you the brand and model number of any new phone within minutes on their website. They don't know more details (eg. color) but they do know your brand and model of phone.
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I am not on a contract. I am keeping my phone beyond 2022 unless it breaks, and that means the phone itself breaks. If AT&T breaks by not supporting it or requiring me to buy a new phone, then I dump them. Making voice calls to landline phones, emergency services, and other non-AT&T non-Apple, non-mobile phones is a requirement for anything calling itself a telephone.
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Yet another reason to stay FAR away from the "Deathstar"...
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That's why they give a lot of notice. You may not have ot upgrade now, but you will have to, because a lot of people are keeping phone
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2 years isn't enough, aside from phones a lot of embedded systems are still using 3G models due to it taking longer for industrial grade 4G ones to become available and fall to an acceptable price, and sometimes also due to 4G ones being physically larger.
Such products typically have a lifetime of at least 5 years minimum, and I can tell you that a couple of years ago AT&T was still saying 3G devices could be sold.
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Not all 4G chips support VoLTE. Early adopters of 4G, a lot of Android and many embedded chips will never get support.
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THIS!
There's still more 3G options out there than 4G for embedded systems. The 4G options are still significantly more expensive.
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There are devices in the field being sold today that using 3G modems, intended to be in service for longer than 5 years.
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Most security hardware is assumed to have a minimum lifetime of 10 years, except for cameras which is generally 5 years. AT&T is going to see a lot of security customers drop their service.
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No idea, our newest vehicle is a 2012. It was probably for On Star (or whatever equivalent service they use). My understanding of On Star (which is several years old) is that without a connectivity contract it will only work for emergency calls, although they can still track you and download your vehicle telemetry at any time.
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They're probably going to shut down 3G for phones, but keep a small sliver of spectrum of 3G available just for those legacy fixed IoT devices.
These devices, stuff like ATMs, security systems, vending machines, and so on, use so little bandwidth that they only need a tiny bit of spectrum to continue supporting them.
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I'd agree with you, except that AT&T isn't really investing much in 5G deployments right now, and is just rebranding their 4G deployments as "5G Evolution" instead.
They got away with this BS for years doing their pre LTE "4G" deployments, and it looks like they're trying it again to stall for time.
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except that AT&T isn't really investing much in 5G deployments right now
Don't they need their 3G spectrum for that? And won't they need to get all the older devices off their network before they can do that?
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And as soon as you do buy a 5G phone, the next week it will be declared obsolete and your service will slowly degrade over time as those 5G towers near you get turned off and converted.
Re: 2 Years is good (Score:2)
Every new cycle, there's a period where downgrading to the old network is faster. I think much of the issue is best explained by the early adopters using an uncluttered network vs the masses using the standard latest gen radio on a saturated network. During these periods I have regularly seen better performance by dropping to (X-1)G.
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I have to agree 2 years is a decent amount of time. It gives the person time to save up, and within 2 years their financial situation can change a few times.
It isn't like a 90 days warning. Where there can be a big number of people needing to upgrade when they cannot afford it at the time.
My biggest concern is how 3G service only seemed to last about 1 decade. My parents have a 100 year old antique telephone, while it cannot dial out (as it only has a crank and not even a dial) it can pick up calls and rin
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Wires (or now, fiber) leave much more room for growth. With wireless, the spectrum is needed so badly for the next generation that there's no way to reasonably keep it all going at the same time.
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My biggest concern is how 3G service only seemed to last about 1 decade.
First 3G network was deployed in 2001, so you're off by a factor of two.
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It wasn't widely deployed until around 2010.
Just like right now while they are some 5G towers out. I am not calling it out yet. But 4G Is the current.
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We had fairly extensive 3G networks in Australia from around 2003.
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2 years is good, because some contracts are for 2 years. This gives their users time to switch to another carrier.
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Seems like most changes in the cell phone industry produce a dance-around of users. Drop the old X network and upgrade to the new Y network... while X has a new network too.
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You do realize that when one clicks the "Learn More" button the very first thing that pops up in large letters is:
Get ready, 3G is going away in 2022 [att.com], followed by "One change weâ(TM)re making is phasing out our 3G network by February 2022. Once we do, 3G devices and 4G wirel
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Yes - I do realize that. That's why I said the notification is good and that the not good thing is not having the date in the email.
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Ok.
You said nothing about the lack of a date in the email, and certainly nothing about the giant read "Learn More" button requiring an impossible decision to click upon it rather than immediately running off to the store.
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This is Slashdot and you think people will click through to read an article before jumping to conclusions? Same for end user and this email. They'll go straight to the AT&T store to ask about their phone without even reading the link.
Dishonest Company (Score:4, Insightful)
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I was once told by AT&T TV Now that the only way to stop the automatic recurring billing on my credit card was to cancel the card.... wow
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Uhm, were you calling AT&T Internet, AT&T Mobility, or Bell Labs when you were trying to call AT&T TV Now? AT&T is quite disjointed lately.
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Three years ago I moved house and tried to get my AT&T POTS and DSL service moved. They botched (lost) the move order and when I tried to get them by phone, kept being sent to a U-verse queue, which was not the service I had.
Eventually I canceled AT&T altogether and went with cable Internet.
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Two years ago I moved and there was no offer of POTS... long live cable.
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If it says AT&T, its AT&T.... End of the story
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AT&T of today used to be called SBC... the 2000s AT&T was split into four parts and all failed.
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Why do you think they're referred to as the "Deathstar"?? Not just because of their logo, THATS FOR SURE!!!!
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Agreed. Not only dishonest, but incompetent to boot.
I've removed ATT from several companies I worked for over the years and in doing so saved them countless tech hours having to work with their idiotic support staff. Comcast, for all the hate they get, are a far better company to work with ( their business packages might be pricy, but it is almost always worth it ).
Good! (Score:2)
Nothing wrong with getting as many people off the old network as quickly as possible.
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You mean than than making people throw away otherwise perfectly good hardware and buying more? Must be nice having unlimited funds available!
Re: Good! (Score:2)
More E-waste that kids in 3rd world countries will have to pick around for, without wearing protective gear.
Better early than late (Score:5, Insightful)
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You mean other than them sending the notice to people whose phone actually DOES have the necessary capability and not telling people that they have 2 years to make a decision?
Nice! (Score:2)
So if we don't upgrade, no more marketeers calling?
Sweet!
Re: Nice! (Score:2)
Uh, no phone calls from anyone else either (which might be a good thing). With a modern phone you get Spam Risk notification if enough people have flagged the number thatâ(TM)s calling you.
Sounds reasonable (Score:2, Informative)
A lot of people need a ton of reminders. It makes sense they give this much advance notice. Remember how the HD transition had to be delayed a few times. Also there are fools still using Windows XP.
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If you think Windows XP is bad, I have people still on SPARCstation 20 with Solaris 7
Re: Sounds reasonable (Score:2)
"Also there are fools still using Windows XP."
Some of those "fools" are running millions of
dollars worth of equipment whose control software
only runs on Windows XP. Of course, you
are free to hand over your paychecks so
you can be part of a noble cause to help
these "fools" upgrade to new equipment and
software.
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You beat me to it. You see stuff like that in physical security all the time, we had a customer in 2013 who was running their AMAG install on Windows 95 because there was no way to get the database off the machine. That same year I found that the security system for the data center of one of the Pacific Northwest's largest hospitals was running under NT4 with no service packs, for much the same reason. The worst that I've personally run into was the utility company whose radio tower control software woul
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The FCC under Ajit could make it happen tomorrow (Score:2)
The FCC under Ajit could make it happen tomorrow if Verizon wants to follow suit with AT&T.
Deceptive as well - Phone settings can be changed (Score:2)
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Re: Deceptive as well - Phone settings can be chan (Score:2)
It's a year and a hallf (Score:5, Insightful)
and people with the older phones are obviously not the kind to upgrade often. Nothing really wrong with starting the notices now, unless you want yet another opportunity to bash AT&T.
But I have 5G (Score:2)
My AT&T phone was upgraded over the air to 5G (or at least the icon at the top of the screen says so), so why don't they just upgrade their phones to use something newer for voice? You don't mean that they were lying about 5G, do you? AT&T wouldn't lie to me, would they?
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For most phones, it's not 3G/4G/5G that's the issue but a new voice codec. Which is of course upgradable by the manufacturer because software can get OTA updates.
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My AT&T phone was upgraded over the air to 5G (or at least the icon at the top of the screen says so), so why don't they just upgrade their phones to use something newer for voice? You don't mean that they were lying about 5G, do you? AT&T wouldn't lie to me, would they?
It may not be possible to upgrade from 3G to 5G using just software.
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Yes, it's the fake 5G. I should have added a disclaimer that I know it was really just 4G being mislabeled, and I was really more pointing out AT&T's history of dishonesty.
Tesla Issue (Score:5, Interesting)
Tesla uses AT&T for connectivity with their cars, and until about May of 2015, the cars only had 3G. So it looks like the first three years of Model S cars will need an upgrade.
Fortunately Tesla has been offering this upgrade since they updated new cars. I believe they charge $500, but at least it's an option. How many other embedded devices use AT&T 3G that don't have an upgrade path?
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Planned obsolescence in just another form.
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T
How many other embedded devices use AT&T 3G that don't have an upgrade path?
New T-Mob will keep a sliver of 2G light up just for IoT and M2M connectivity. Which is basically what your use case needs.
So, in cars/smartmeters/ebedded devices were is not feasible to go to a 4G modem, you can just switch providers. The same is happening in other markets worldwide for IoT and M2M. Depending on frequencies, bussiness and refarming plans, some carriers switch off 2G and 3G completely, while others see a market vacuum and leave a sliver of 2G for just IoT, M2M (and some crazy ones even roa
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Fortunately Tesla has been offering this upgrade since they updated new cars. I believe they charge $500, but at least it's an option. How many other embedded devices use AT&T 3G that don't have an upgrade path?
Do IoT devices - including Tesla - have to be on one carrier or another? If you drive out of your coverage zone, will it communicate on another carrier?
I don't have a lot of IoT devices, just a couple Google Home pucks and a smart TV that all use WiFi, so I've never thought about this before. I do know that I've never heard of setting up service with AT&T or anyone else when buying a device other than a phone.
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Generally it's a bulk contract with the IoT seller. So in this cast Tesla has a contract with AT&T. Presumably the cars have some sort of built-in SIM card, but I'm not clear on how that works. I have no idea if they could push a software update to switch to another provider, or if there is hardware that ties them to AT&T.
Not that it's relevant, but Tesla now charges for "premium connectivity" which covers having satellite images in the maps and streaming services, but the base connectivity which
Now when will LTE coverage equal 3G? (Score:2)
The only problem I have with this sunsetting of 3G is that coverage of LTE is nowhere near comparable to that of 3G, at least in my experience. Sprint seems to have already cut way back on their 3G bandwidth availability in parts of the Bay Area, and as a result, my iPhone 6s drops to 1xRTT in lots of places where I had 3G service before. It gets particularly bad going over CA-17.
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"Now when will LTE coverage equal 3G?"
In two years time. Either that, or they will postpone the switchoff of 3G. Is not like they will allow an area that previosly had service to simply go dark.
Is not because of FCC rules (which there are), nor for the kindness of their hearts, but rather because, even if they let an area go dark, they have to pay the leases of the tower sites, electricity (and those sites have indsutrial contracts based on installed capacity, seldomly if ever those have meters), mainetenan
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I'm not talking about towers here. I'm talking about signal propagation differences. I'm pretty sure that 100% of the towers out here have LTE coverage on every antenna mast, and that every single cellular antenna on those masts is providing LTE service.
Sprint and Verizon have this great 800 MHz band for CDMA 3G that cuts through buildings and trees better than the higher-frequency signals, and when you're in fringe reception areas, that matters a great deal. Those signals can reach places where the high
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I'm not talking about towers here. I'm talking about signal propagation differences. I'm pretty sure that 100% of the towers out here have LTE coverage on every antenna mast, and that every single cellular antenna on those masts is providing LTE service.
Sprint and Verizon have this great 800 MHz band for CDMA 3G that cuts through buildings and trees better than the higher-frequency signals, and when you're in fringe reception areas, that matters a great deal. Those signals can reach places where the higher-frequency signals don't work reliably. And AFAIK, nobody is doing 800 MHz LTE, at least in North America, so unless that changes, when those CDMA bands go away, coverage will decrease in hilly areas and indoors.
And what do you think AT&T will do with all those 3G frequencyes that will be vacant in two years time? Leaving them unused after paying Billinos for them? Or perhaps repurpose them for 4G and 5G? Which both are being capable of HDVoice ;-)
Is called "Frequency refarming"
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Yeah, I guess that overlaps with LTE band 26, so they will be able to eventually support it. In the meantime, though, it really hurts.
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The two things are connected. Wireless spectrum is limited, so carriers are converting frequency bands from older protocols to newer protocols.
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Except they aren't. Well, they are, but not the band that matters (800 MHz). Instead, I *think* that their towers are just telling LTE-capable devices like iPhones that they can't connect to CDMA, allowing their legacy phones that don't support LTE to get by on a smaller amount of bandwidth. The unfortunate result is that when the iPhones get into fringe territory and can't see 1.9 GHz and 2.5 GHz signals, they lose everything but 1xRTT.
This is probably solvable through better tower management software,
They have done worse (Score:2)
Only took 20 years for them to learn... (Score:2)
When AT&T switched from TDMA to GPRS, I found out about it when my phone stopped working.
At least now they're giving two years notice.
2 years is barely enough (Score:1)
The email has a big button labelled "learn more" (Score:2)
But the article does not say what extra information is disclosed if you click on it.
Does it tells you in the "learn more" button that the cut off date is two years from now?
Unless an slashdotter received the email and tells us, we may never know.
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Yes. [att.com]
Time for a new flip phone (Score:2)
I never received this email (or haven't received it as the case may be) and can't remember if I ever gave them my email address, which may explain why I haven't received this email.
Regardless, it looks like I need to find a no frills flip phone to transition to. Something which has a phone rather than a web browser. No cruft, no fluff, just a phone. And not overly expensive either.
Suggestion?
That's odd--they did that to me 10 years ago (Score:2)
I got a letter in the mail about 10 years ago (2010-ish) telling me that my phone will no longer be supported because it's 3G and I should visit a store to get an upgrade. Were they lying to me then, or is this above and beyond "no more 3G"?
It might have been a ploy to get me to do something that would renew my contract. I don't use them any more, but that is annoying.
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What about 2G? (Score:2)
It seems that there are a *lot* of M2M applications (e.g. elevators) deployed that use good old fashioned GSM type devices - and why not, they are very cheap these days.
It seems to be that 2G (GSM) is going to stay for a reasonable while longer, while 3G gets phased out. Didn't AT&T ever support GSM in the US?
2 years is how long it takes to pay off an iPhone (Score:2)
The lack of a firm date is rat bastardy though.
Tight budgets/fixed income? (Score:2)
Most of us who are actively reading and responding to articles on slashdot are probably in a very different financial position than those individuals who are still using 3G devices.
For individuals like my uncle the only way he gets a new phone is if a family member gifts one to him. If he didn't have that lifeline he'd hav
No problem (Score:2)
Just like the last time they contacted me to upgrade or lose service. They expected me to come in and pick from among their smartphone selection. And add a data plan along the way (which I don't have). Fooled them. I walked out of the store with a $50 3G flip phone. Now I've got two years to find the cheapest 4G phone that they support.
AT&T are assholes (Score:2)
Out of the blue, completely unasked for, AT&T messed with our bill and changed our plan to a much more expensive plan.
When we asked for it to be changed back, they billed us over $200 for the downgrade, and they simply would not listen to reason. They were the entire cause of this bullshit charge and they admitted it (!!) but still wouldn't refund the money.
Many many calls were made and many hours wasted trying to straighten it out. AT&T wouldn't budge, not even for a customer of 20+ years. Basicall
A huge problem (Score:2)
There are thousands (millions?) of embedded cellular devices used in heavy industry, among other things. Are they seriously expecting companies to junk their current equipment and upgrade to be able to stay on-line to the tune of millions of dollars?
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I expect there will soon be a market for devices that can talk to that equipment and translate the signal to 5G, but it won't be cheap. Still, when you've paid a million dollars for a chunk of assembly line coughing up another ten grand to make it keep working might sound like a deal.
AT&T's 2500 page contract agreement (Score:2)
AT&T has been rotten for a long time. Time to break it up along with the rest of the bloated, corrupt and inefficient telcos and media conglomerates.
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THIS is the real news story... AT&T is using the phase-out of 3G to try and turn themselves into a proprietary network where only AT&T-branded (and locked) devices sold by AT&T will work.
Shit like this is why Biden is probably going to win this fall, unleash Liz on evil anti-consumer companies like AT&T, and nobody is going to feel the least bit sorry for them. AT&T will have brought the wrath entirely upon themselves by being abusive assholes, and they'll totally deserve 100% of whateve
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'elp, 'elp, I'm bein' repressed!