It'll be interesting to see how this affects reception in the fringes of current service. There's plenty of places once you get a bit away from town where I've noticed the phone drops back to 3g to get any trace of reception, and while it's generally not enough to get you data that might be enough to get an emergency call out if necessary.
Most 3g towers will be replaced with 4g and 5g so it should be similar (or better in throughput) but some phones will have issues in band support. My phone is missing one of the popular 4g bands, for example, so that may impact rural coverage in particular.
Doesn't 4G and 5G also have a shorter range?
You don't just need to replace 3G towers, you likely need to add more towers.
They'll be using the same frequencies for the most part so should have the same range (and use the same towers). "Low band 5g" is the search term if you want to know more.
You would think so, but I notice this even in areas where you'd think every tower would also have 4G coverage (in the hills near Canberra for example) so I feel like the 3G cells just have a little edge when it comes to coverage.
Expect 2nd hand phone prices on eBay to spike.
(On the other hand: ones that can only do 3G voice will suddenly get cheaper. Some of these might be fixable through changing to a provider that provides the correct firmware over-the-air and/or by flashing a new rom. Maybe)
Anyone else surprised Vodafone can spare even the 3g portion of their network? Surely thats like a 50% cut of their coverage. Ok, I joke, but 20% probably isnt a stretch.
I'm thankful that Optus is at least preserving 3G for a little longer. Gives me a bit more time to work out what I'm going to do if my phone does get cut off next year.
Sony Xperia XZ1 running iodéOS 4.7 (Android 13). My network provider is Optus. VoLTE cannot be enabled on the device, though I'm not sure if this is due to network provider incompatibility or the operating system. I have a Galaxy Note 9 running the same operating system that I believe does support VoLTE, so I will most likely go back to using that if the Sony stops working.
