The sunset of 2 and 3G turns VoLTE Roaming into a priority

Why and how VoLTE Roaming is about to get really big!

In 2011, all three South Korean operators turned off their 2G networks – including both GSM and CDMA variants. In the US, AT&T stopped servicing its 2G network over four years ago and in Canada, Bell did the same a year later. Verizon Wireless phased out its 2G CDMA network at the end of last year, Sprint did the same in December, and T-Mobile will shut off its 2G network in December of 2022 at the latest. For 3G, AT&T will cease its work on that spectrum in February of 2022, and says it’s already seen the last phone activation on 3G network—Sprint says its last 3G call was made in April 2019, and all 3G will stop next year, too.

Though European carriers are not quite so aggressive about all this—Vodafone has committed to not shutting its GSM network down until 2025, for example, and BT says it will end 3G in 2022 but keep 2G until the late 2020s—the writing is clearly on the wall for 2G and 3G. GSMA Intelligence reports that from now to 2025, more than 55 2G and 3G networks will be closed.

Why? Operators want to shift their investments and assets to 4G and 5G: in 2019, when Dutch MNO VodafoneZiggo closed its 3G service in February 2020, it stated that, “The frequency space becoming available can be used far more efficiently for 4G [which is] necessary because more capacity is needed on the 4G network since customer data usage is rising sharply.”

There’s simple good business in doing this, as Caroline Gabriel from Rethink Technology Research points out: “Freeing up sub-2 GHz 2G frequencies helps extend coverage and may even save an operator from bidding in often expensive auctions for low band spectrum.”

This has significant implications. Put simply, the end of 2G and 3G means the end of circuit switched voice. That’s fine in domestic and national networks, where VoLTE has made huge process as a native IP-based voice service – by the end of 2020, VoLTE services have now been launched in over 220 networks in more than 100 countries, reports Ericsson, for instance.

But it creates a big challenge when it comes to roaming in a 4- and 5G dominated world. That’s because VoLTE Roaming—the ability to experience higher-quality 4G voice services, enabled by the IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) outside the home network of the user—hasn’t taken off.

There are various reasons why, some of which are legitimate, and some less so. But the reality is that VoLTE Roaming has not been considered a priority for operators. The bottom line, though, we think that’s about to change, and dramatically—for both technical and market reasons. The sunsetting of everything pre-LTE and 4G must be a prompt to do some serious planning about how to support customers—and your own market position—going forward.

For a long time, operators have been able to focus on VoLTE in their home networks and to rely on circuit-switched fallback when it comes to roaming. That time is now as dead as 2G in South Korea, so you’d best be prepared to do something about it.