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Communications

Taiwan To Shut Down 3G Networks By Year End (zdnet.com) 38

Posted by msmash from the up-next dept.
Consumers in Taiwan will only be able to use 4G services from 2019 as the government will shut down 3G services by the end of the year, according to a Sina news report on Monday, citing local Taiwan media reports. From a report: Although the vast majority of the population in Taiwan have shifted to 4G networks, there are still around 200,000 consumers using 3G. This has prompted local carriers to roll out incentives and promotions to get 3G users to shift onto the latest 4G plans. Taiwan's latest move to shut down 3G networks follows its earlier decision to remove all 2G networks on July 1, 2017, as local regulators and telecom operators continue to actively push for the development of 4G network coverage. As of March this year, the number of 4G users has already exceeded the population in Taiwan, said the report. The number of 3G users has declined to some 228,000 people in mid-November from 5.5 million in 2017.
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Taiwan To Shut Down 3G Networks By Year End More

Taiwan To Shut Down 3G Networks By Year End

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  • Are they shutting down an EVDO network? Or are they turning off HSPA?
    The implications are not the same.

    • Anything that isn't LTE.

      • so they are going to use VoLTE for voice calls?

        • Correct.

          • that's a bit old, but that's not what they say in this article:
            http://www.telecomreviewasia.c... [telecomreviewasia.com]

            • If you still have 3G it will fallback to circuit switched for voice. But no one is going to do that. There aren't very many 3G users left and they will all switch as soon as their services stop working. LTE is the present and the future!

              • my point was that I am not convinced they will indeed turn off UMTS voice by the end of the year. That article from January says the opposite.
                It looks like they might be turning off HSPA data however, and force people to use LTE for data.

                • Not voice, voice will have fallbacks, but data. No one uses networks for voice only in 2018.

                  • China telecom does

                  • So they are not turning off 3G, TFS is wrong. Might have been clearer if they just said they shut off HSPA data.

                  • No one uses networks for voice only in 2018.

                    Then I must be no one. Where I live, a cellular ISP's monthly hotspot data transfer allotment tends to be orders of magnitude less than what a wired ISP offers: 10 GB per month for cellular vs. 1000 GB per month for wired. This is why I subscribe to cellular voice through T-Mobile USA and wired home data through the local cable company and tolerate loss of connection while riding in a moving vehicle.

                    Or did you specifically mean "no one in Taiwan"? If so, how does ISP pricing in Taiwan differ in a way that w

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by quenda ( 644621 )

        4G has been around a while, but isn't VoLTE - voice over LTE - only a few years old?
        Many handsets still rely on 3G for voice calls, while using 4G LTE for data.
        Not in Taiwan?

  • Embedded sytems and non-phone devices (Score:4, Interesting)

    by TWX ( 665546 ) on Tuesday December 18, 2018 @11:57AM (#57824476)

    Taiwan really doesn't want embedded systems, fire alarm dialers, security systems, and a whole host of other SCADA or EMS systems to use the cellular network, does it?

    Those kinds of devices aren't swapped-out as often as people replace their cell phones. Probably need a ten year service life out of 'em to justify the costs to use that technology instead of good old-fashioned copper landlines, and since they're often in life-safety applications they need a longer dev cycle to be reliable enough.

    • Hopefully the carriers will have expensive solutions to offer consumers to do what was previously inexpensive.

    • In Taiwan those systems were swapped out for LTE-M a long time ago. It is 2018. Time to move on.
      • I feel like you're trying to rain on everyone's parade of living in the US and giving out excuses for issues that boil down to companies having been too cheap to make infrastructure improvements or replace long since antiqued systems.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by TWX ( 665546 )

        And if those systems work and are secure, why exactly would companies spend extra in order to swap them out in order to achieve, from the business' point of view, identical service?

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

        In Taiwan those systems were swapped out for LTE-M a long time ago. It is 2018. Time to move on.

        Funny enough, in Canada we have problems where a software update made a Samsung phone unable to call 911 [www.cbc.ca]. It got so bad that the provider was forced to move everyone with that phone model from LTE to 3G just so they can make 911 calls reliably, until Samsung issues a fix for the problem.

        Crap happens, even today.

  • So if this is 4G = LTE, then this is an absolute nightmare for voice calls. Today at least phones need to be provisioned for VoLTE and it's not something that's as simple as GSM/UMTS/HSPA was. Essentially negotiate a few parameters and give me a channel to talk on seamlessly. When roaming anywhere I always drop off to HSPA to complete the call and here in my home country of Canada no 'International Version' of a cell phone will do HD Voice or VoLTE or LTE-A.

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