All three major telcos have been warning customers to make sure they upgrade from 3G-only devices, but also to check if their 4G and 5G devices have something called Voice over LTE (VoLTE), so that they don’t get caught out when 3G networks shut down.
Telstra and Optus 3G shutdowns
Telstra: June 30, 2024
Other affected carriers using the Telstra network include:
- ALDI Mobile
- Belong
- Boost Mobile
- Exetel
- Lycamobile
- MATE
- More
- numobile
- Superloop
- Tangerine
- Woolworths Mobile
Optus: September, 2024
Other affected carriers using the Optus network include:
- amaysim
- Aussie Broadband
- Catch Connect
- Circles.Life
- Coles Mobile
- Dodo
- iPrimus
- Moose Mobile
- Southern Phone
- SpinTel
- Yomojo
The 25 most common devices which may be affected
According to the Australian Mobile Telecommunications Association.
- Alcatel 2038
- Alcatel OneTouch 2045
- Apple iPhone 5
- Apple iPhone 5C
- Apple iPhone 5S
- Aspera A42
- Doro PhoneEasy 623 OPTUS
- Doro 6521
- Google Pixel 2 XL
- Huawei E5331
- Huawei E5251s-2
- Huawei Y6 Prime
- Nokia 301
- Oppo A57
- Oppo F1s
- Oppo F5 Youth
- Optus X Smart
- Samsung Galaxy J1 Mini
- Samsung Galaxy S5
- ZTE Blade A0605
My last whinge on this topic.
In the Android world, you could improve security and effectively extend the life of the phone by installing a 3rd party ROM, eg LineageOS. Depending on the community and skills of interested developers, this could continue being updated and even included upgrades to new Android versions with new features for years after the manufacturer abandoned it.
But some phones have proprietary implementations for VoLTE and VoWiFi. Eg on my Samsung phone,.which will soon stop receiving Samsung updates, everything on any AOSP based ROM works except VoLTE and VoWiFi.
So, this effectively makes these 3rd party OS’s useless. You won’t be able to take or make calls.
I’m not happy about that, and make make sure my next phone purchase will have VoLTE etc available on AOSP
I am potentially in the same boat. I’ll need to wait for the Optus shutdown date to be sure, though. Hopefully my older phones continue to work since they are all still being regularly updated and are superior in some ways to modern smartphones (size, headphone jack, SD card, no selfie notch, etc).