T-Mobile's 3G Network Sunset Raising Fewer Concerns Than AT&T's Shutdown

T-Mobile’s pending shutdown of its 3G/CDMA network Thursday isn’t raising the same level of concerns as when AT&T shuttered its legacy network last month (see 2202240002), experts said. T-Mobile has far fewer security or other alarm systems attached to its network than AT&T. Dish Network raised concerns about 3G handsets used by Boost customers, the prepaid provider it acquired from T-Mobile, but those have been largely addressed, experts said.

“AT&T represented such a vast majority of all devices that while there are companies that have devices with T-Mobile SIMs in them, it’s a minority of the sort of magnitude of customers that needed to be upgraded” on the AT&T network, Daniel Oppenheim, CEO of Affiliated Monitoring, told us. “It’s an issue of scale, of quantity,” he said. Oppenheim spoke on behalf of the Alarm Industry Communications Committee (AIIC), which raised concerns about the AT&T sunset and unsuccessfully asked the FCC to force a pause (see 2108200021).

Some alarm companies use T-Mobile, or used Sprint before T-Mobile acquired it, but alarm industry surveys show some 70% of devices providing safety, security, fire and medical alerts are on the AT&T network, Oppenheim said. It’s a company-by-company decision and security companies tend to be loyal to a single network, he said.

Dish and other objections forced T-Mobile to pause the shutdown last year until the end of March (see 2110250042), though Dish officials said then that wasn’t long enough. Dish didn’t comment Friday. T-Mobile declined comment, referring us to an update on its webpage from October. T-Mobile Chief Financial Officer Peter Osvaldik said at a recent financial conference the company is “absolutely on track” to turn the network off this week (see 2203160046).

The California Public Utilities Commission released a final decision earlier this month denying Dish’s April 28 petition to modify the state commission’s April 2020 T-Mobile/Sprint approval. Commissioners unanimously supported the decision to punt to DOJ on the Dish/T-Mobile dispute (see 2203170072). “We find that it is appropriate to leave the determination of what constitutes reasonable notice of the proposed CDMA shutdown to the federal government,” the final decision said.

“I have not heard from any alarm or other IoT users that they have the same concerns about the shutdown of the T-Mobile CDMA network,” Public Knowledge Senior Vice President Harold Feld. “From what I can tell, neither Sprint nor T-Mobile had anything close to the number of IoT customers on their networks as AT&T and Verizon, at least when devices were connecting to 3G networks,” he said: “I don't think this is going to raise the same level of concern.” PK and other public interest groups support AIIC’s calls for a delay on the AT&T sunset.

The main concern had been between Dish and T-Mobile about Dish’s ability to get handsets for its Boost customers, Feld said. “From what we have seen over the last few months, the handset problem was manageable despite the concerns about the chip shortage,” he said. “While it's important for the FCC to continue to monitor the situation and be alert from problems, things seem to be moving reasonably smoothly.”

“The impact of the 3G shutdown depends on how successful the company was in the 3G era … since very few if any 3G devices were sold in the last several years,” said Recon Analyics’ Roger Entner: “Both T-Mobile and Sprint were only modestly successful during that time and their 3G customers churned off as both companies had at that time elevated churn. When we shut down 4G in 10-plus years this will look different.”

Oppenheim said the AT&T shutdown was a huge challenge for many AIIC members. “The biggest challenge is the time it takes to reach out, engage a customer, arrange for the installation, educate the customer,” he said. Before the early part of the year, customers weren’t aware of what was coming and the first time they heard about it was when they got a call from their alarm company, he said: “Their personal phone had gone to 4G years before, and in many cases they’re hearing about 5G and they may have a 5G phone. This 3G network was not on the radar of the average American consumer.”

The shutdown was occurring “while COVID was happening and while supply-chain challenges were happening,” Oppenheim said. “It has been tough.”

Industry officials said AT&T appears to mostly be finished with the shuttering of the network across the U.S. AT&T declined comment on the status of the retirement.