Goodbye 3G, long live 2G networks.

Indonesia decided to kill 3G networks, but keep older 2G standards.

Why. Why. Why???#

Honestly, I don’t f*ing know.

Sometime ago “they” decided to stop supporting 3G devices, while the coverage of LTE networks still isn’t stable enough (subject to bias). Major telecom companies are doing this willingly.

Okay, maybe we can speculate on the reasoning behind this. Your allocated radio frequencies are not enough to accommodate the 5G radio, so kill 3G instead and use their spectrum. Why don’t we ban 2G band first? Ah, distribution of client devices might be the case. A lot people in rural area still uses 2G, so kill 3G instead. According to “something” or “someone”, a lot (read: most) people uses of VoIP to make calls, so kill 3G instead (definitely not me, I use both equally). Why the hell we need to care about people, so kill 3G instead.
This is definitely just a political decision to manage radio spectrum and support of the New Radio, they said.

Voice calls.#

Of course, if you can connect to the Internet you can call almost anyone (also read: almost no one) with VoIP. Don’t get me started on this, as this is pretty much straightforward *wink.

GSM/2G has been the standard for communication since 1991. They even have evolved into EDGE to support higher data rates. Now, 3G upgraded that in voice and also in mobile data. So much sense that we should kill the older stuff, no? Or maybe I’m the one that doesn’t have much sense, you decide.

Honestly VoLTE is the best thing to do these days. Practically though, …
In my case, having a VoLTE capable phone and provider should be good right? Wrong! Definitely wrong. The network support sucks. All of my calls (as the time of writing) never get through via VoLTE. So, for me at least, it just doesn’t work. If VoLTE is not the solution, VoNR (Voice over 5G) must not be either *wink.

How it affects users (me).#

Most of voice calls here are still using 2G networks. This means that our cellphone needs to move from whatever network it currently in to 2G networks. For example, we are using the Internet over LTE to play time sensitive game (read: chess), suddenly someone tries to call you via cellphone number, before the ringing signal can even get through, your phone will switch to 2G meaning that you lost the connection (read: lose the game). Even after the call ends, it takes time to switch back to LTE and get any Internet connection. This also means when we are on a call with someone, there is no way to use Google to search how’s the weather today.

At least for today, I don’t f*ing know why this must be a thing.