Australia's 3G network is being shutdown after 20 years, making way for 4G and 5G technology
With 65,000 still yet to upgrade, there are concerns they could be cut off from vital services. Telecommunications consultant Paul Budde explains why 3G is being switched-off.
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00:00We are using the mobile phone more and more and more, there are now 39 million mobile
00:07phones in use and we mainly use it for 90%, 99% for data and that requires an enormous
00:14amount of capacity that has to go through the network.
00:18Now the radio spectrum is used for that and the radio spectrum is channeled in particular
00:26blocks and in principle we need more blocks, if you talk about for example the landline
00:33you need bigger cables, now it's not the cable in the air of course, but you need more space
00:39in the radio spectrum to do that.
00:41So that's why we went from 3G to 4G to 5G, increasingly adding more spectrum to the mobile
00:49network but also using new technologies that use the spectrum more efficiently, so that's
00:55why we can't have any more 3G, that 3G spectrum now has to be used to satisfy the 39 million
01:03customers of the mobile network of which 99% are on either 4G or 5G at the moment.
01:12The government has done in informing people, making people aware and getting prepared for
01:18it.
01:20Yes, that's now roughly five years or three years that that has been happening, so in
01:26general basically all the businesses they have that responsibility of course to change
01:31their technology and most of them if not all have done that, they've had plenty of time
01:37to do that.
01:39The problem basically is with the approximately 100,000 users that are still on the old 3G
01:46network and both Optus and Telstra are providing free phones for the people that are still
01:52on the old, who still have these old phones.
01:55But it is very difficult to reach those last 100,000 people, perhaps some of those phones
02:00are simply in a drawer and are not used, of course others might be used by people that
02:06in one way or another have not been able to get the message.
02:10I always have indicated, you know, please use that the children, grandchildren, friends
02:16of elderly people, just ask these people if they have the right phone, help everybody.
02:23But you know, it looks like this is going to happen by the end of September, the end
02:28of the 3G network for Telstra in many cases will start.