3G Bows Out, Two Decades After Helping Usher in Smartphone Era

The 3G technology which was introduced in the early 2000s was downright advanced at the time. It allowed for sending images and text over wireless devices, paving the way for the first generation of smartphones which had browsing capabilities.

At the end of the December billing period, 3G went the way of the telegraph and Kodak camera, made obsolete by new technology. Verizon, the last holdout in using the 3G network, phased it out in the United States and cut off customers' ability to make calls or send texts without an upgrade to 4G. Other carriers, such as T-Mobile and AT&T, had ended it a year ago.

Verizon had already announced in 2019 that it would soon stop serving 3G on phones, but kept on postponing the deadline. It finally laid out a red line in December. Customers will now only be able to use it for emergency 911 calls or for customer service. 

The move is believed to affect between 5 and 10 million users who never upgraded. For most people, 3G was associated with the frustration of dropped calls and slow internet, though the seconds it took to download a page had once been hailed as state-of-the-art. For most, their only connection to the dated technology was when they entered an area with little connectivity and their phones dropped to 3G.

With the arrival of 4G in 2009, technology became so advanced that web browsing became routine in phones and high-res images downloaded immediately. The recent rollout of 5G will likely make 4G as obsolete as 3G.

photo credit: Flickr