3G shutdown and 4G phone compatibility

Life Technology
1

Any info on when 3G networks will be shut down in Taiwan?

Also, there’s some information saying that after 3G is shut down, 4G phones purchased overseas may or may not work in Taiwan for voice calls anymore, as some phones rely on fallback-to-3G for voice calling, even if 4G data works. Even if the phone is unlocked and has the correct frequency bands, the phone may need Taiwan-specific “enablement settings” that phones purchased overseas might not have (and their specs don’t tell you if they have the settings installed or not). Please refer to the section “3G shutdown and 4G phone compatibility” on this page:

Any idea what’s going on?

2

I thought they went down at the end of last year.

3

Their licenses may have expired but the network is still running. My 3G phone still works on Far Eastone.

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4

Mine does too. Once they turn 3G off, I’ll switch to landline and pigeons.

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My prediction is that, after Taiwan shuts down 3G, some (not all) 4G phones purchased outside Taiwan will stop being able to make voice calls inside Taiwan (even if they are still able to do 4G data). This is based on the information I cited above.

My assumption is that some of those phones are currently making voice calls via 3G-fallback (even while 4G data is working).

So my question is, if you are using a 4G phone in Taiwan that was purchased outside Taiwan, can you confirm whether your voice calls are connecting via 4G, or doing a 3G-fallback? Please note that having a “4G” or “LTE” indicator light up on your handset might only mean 4G data (maybe need to check your phone manual for the meaning of the indicator). In that case, how do you confirm that your voice calls are currently connecting on 4G and not doing 3G-fallback?

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If you dial a phone number, it will change to 3G/H+ on the top. Also 3G works just fine. Change your phone to work on only UMTS and it works just fine. Data and all.

7

OK. If I understand correctly, your phone is doing voice calls on 3G, not 4G. Any idea why your phone isn’t doing voice calls on 4G?

8

Cause i turned VoLTE off. 4G gets terrible coverage inside my house. Half the time it just connects to 3G anyway.

9

You’ve been quiet lately.

10

OK, then good luck when they shut down the 3G network.

May I ask where you purchased your phone (I mean what country or continent)?

11

Nahh not really. I can do my own tech support. This is how I can receive calls in my house. It works so far. If I need to, then I’ll take care of it another way when it is shut down.

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The reality is that while the 3G (UMTS) licenses have expired, the 4G (LTE) licenses include provision for 3G services. APTG/GT still have a 2G (GSM) network in operation.

At the moment, a complete shutdown of the 3G network is difficult because that requires that all handsets and service plans be VoLTE enabled: to the best of my knowledge, no prepaid service available in Taiwan permits VoLTE use, and even on monthly service plans, it’s often an additional charge add-on.

Even if the networks open VoLTE to all users, the devices need to be VoLTE compatible. Many low-end devices are not, and even high-end devices are often only compatible with a small number of operators. Additionally, even for ‘data only’ SIM cards, many devices will show ‘No service’ if there is no voice network available, which is why such SIMs are actually just voice-enabled SIMs with all calls barred.

The next catch is roaming. VoLTE roaming is possible but not widely deployed: running an all-LTE network means giving up lots of roaming revenue, which is exactly what happened to KDDI in Japan, though being an ex-CDMA carrier, they were used to that.

For these reasons and more, the legacy UMTS network will still be around for a while in a limited capacity. Some of the spectrum assigned to it will be rapidly refarmed for LTE - for example, if there is 20 MHz of spectrum for one operator’s UMTS network, then 5 MHz will remain for voice users and 15 MHz will be reallocated for LTE.

The NCC could easily stipulate in future that the legacy 3G network will be shared (ie: all of the operators share the same network: this is a ‘multi operator core network’ (MOCN) deployment) and reserve it for voice traffic only while pushing the operators to make VoLTE more widely accessible.

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Hi MeepMeep. Thanks for the additional details. If I understand correctly, this confirms my suspicion that when 3G services in Taiwan get shut down (or get transitioned into some form of “limited capacity” as you mentioned), some owners of 4G phones will suddenly find that they can no longer make voice calls inside Taiwan. I bet that’ll come as a surprise to them.

Just to respond to a few things…

“In operation” can mean a lot of different things. My unlocked quad-band 2G phone (with a Far Eastone pre-paid SIM) stopped working in Taiwan on 2017.7.1, exactly on schedule – except that for a few weeks or months after that, I was able to use a Hong Kong SIM in the same phone and do calls and texts (while inside Taiwan). Sometime later, that wouldn’t work either. Scanning for available networks showed one with a numeric identifier that refused registration if I selected it (regardless of which SIM I was using). As far as I can tell, I can’t make a 2G call anymore inside Taiwan, except perhaps emergency calls only.

In other words, the 2G network may still be in operation but I’m no longer able to use it. When I said “shut down” earlier, my meaning was not “powered off and dismantled”, I meant no longer usable by ordinary users for ordinary purposes (like phone calls and such). 2G may be “in operation” but it also appears to be “out of service”.

In other words, even though you already own the phone, and already have a paid-up subscription with the carrier, they’ll still charge you even more, just for the privilege of making a phone call. How kind of them.

Apparently, the mobile carriers didn’t like the fact that there’s such a thing as an unlocked phone, so they invented a new way to tie your phone to one (or a small number of) carrier(s). It sounds like “the new locking” to me. People who buy phones advertised as “unlocked” are going to be in for a surprise.

As I pointed out above with the 2G situation, “limited capacity” could mean a lot of different things. While they may be generous at first, they could at some point restrict 3G calling to those who pay a “3G legacy network premium”, or according to where the phone was purchased, or to favored brands/models of phones, etc. I don’t know who’s behind all this, but my prediction is that the mobile phone ecosystem (carriers, handset providers, etc.) will engineer the transition in such a way as to maximize revenues to their ecosystem. What we will see is that anyone who travels internationally will have to do one or more of (a) pay a lot of money for an expensive new “world phone” that is both unlocked and compatible with many carriers, or (b) buy multiple phones for different countries, or (c) pay extra fees to enable voice calling, over and above the normal pre-paid service rates. (Notice that each of these increases revenues to the ecosystem and decreases the bank account of the consumer.) Also, in order to maximize consumer confusion, we will see phones being sold with no way to determine where the phone will work and where it won’t work (unlike in the 2G quad-band days when you could tell pretty easily).

Some of the above is happening already. My point is that, until the sunset of 3G services (I’ll say “sunset” instead of “shutdown”), most people won’t realize how insidious all this is (and how much money they’ll be expected to part with, in order to keep making phone calls).

Cheers!