Switzerland wants to bury GSM mobile communications standard from 2023
The GSM mobile radio standard is now more than 30 years old. In our neighboring country Switzerland, GSM will finally be obsolete from 2023. At the beginning of January, the last mobile phone provider switched off the 2G network.
Deactivation of the GSM standard in Switzerland from 2023
The Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM for short) had already replaced analogue networks in mobile communications in 1990. In 2006, the mobile communications standard experienced a boom before it was gradually replaced by the UMTS 3G network.
In Switzerland, too, the last mobile phone provider will take the 2G standard off the network on January 3, 2023. Network operator Sunrise, the second largest provider in Switzerland, has now announced this in a press release. Swisscom and Salt Mobile went offline earlier.
“We have deliberately made the transition to a modern generation of mobile communications more flexible to the benefit of our customers,” says André Kause, CEO of Sunrise. 2G connections are practically no longer needed, which is why it was decided to switch off the GSM standard from the beginning of 2023.
Sunrise has informed the few customers who are still using the 2G standard about the shutdown by letter and wants to support them in switching to new solutions with a modern mobile phone standard such as 4G and 5G.
The 3G standard should go with Sunrise “in the next 3 to 4 years” also to the collar, it is said. From then on, it only wants to focus on its 4G and 5G networks. The largest network operator in Switzerland, Swisscom, switched off its GSM network in April 2021.
UMTS is also on the verge of extinction
In Austria, Magenta Telekom announced that it would shut down its UMTS network on January 1, 2024 already announced in April.
“Customers who use a 3G-enabled device that does not support 4G/LTE or 5G can only use the 2G network after the 3G switch-off,” said the Austria-based provider. However, the 2G GSM network is to be retained for sending plain text messages. Network operator A1, on the other hand, will maintain its 3G network until the end of 2024.
In Germany, Gigaset has just announced a new, downright “old-school” 4G GSM clamshell phone, the GL7, while network operators continue to work on expanding the 5G network. Recently, for example, O2 Telefónica made the breakthrough by enabling 5G reception on almost the entire route of the Munich subway network.