If you are holding onto an older 3G phone from Verizon, hoping that one day you’ll activate it and re-live the glory days of tech life where we didn’t stare at screens for 5-6 hours per day, or plan on buying a replacement from a third party website such as eBay, Swappa, Craigslist, etc, it’s time to give it up. Verizon is no longer activating 3G-only phones and certain 4G LTE devices as well. Instead, they will only accept 4G LTE-equipped VoLTE (Voice over LTE) phones going forward.
Earlier this year, rumors circulated suggesting that Verizon would stop activating 3G phones by June or July. In the past week, a couple of readers reached out to let me know that Verizon had turned them down for trying, so we reached out to Verizon who confirmed that it is indeed the end for 3G and non 4G LTE VoLTE:
“For several years we’ve been publicly saying that our 3G CDMA network will remain available through the end of 2019. Virtually all traffic on our network is on our 4G LTE network.
“To facilitate a smooth transition to 4G LTE capable products and services, we are no longer allowing devices that are not 4G LTE capable with VoLTE to be activated on our network.”
Now, as is noted in the statement above, Verizon has committed to shutting down its 3G CDMA network by the end of 2019. They also stopped selling 3G devices some time ago. If they want everyone on LTE, which most customers are at this point, then not allowing additional 3G devices to be activated is probably the right move.
On a related note, an earlier leak suggested that Verizon may stop some older LTE devices from being activated too. The documentation there said that CDMA devices as well as devices that do not support HD Voice or VoLTE will not be accepted. Below is a screen shot form a conversation I had with a Verizon rep showing which Apple devices are affected by this recent change. I attempted to get a list of Android device but was told that is still being compiled as part of this ongoing change.
No comments:
Post a Comment