3G Shutdown in Australia: What’s happening and why, and what you need to do [Updated]

Australia’s 3G shutdown is imminent  – and not without good reason. Here’s what you need to know, what you should do and why it’s all happening – plus my opinion on how it’s been managed.

FAQ
When will 3G be shut down in Australia?
Will 3G shut down everywhere at once in Australia?
I’m not with Telstra, Optus or TPG/Vodafone – can I still stay on 3G?
Why shut down 3G in Australia at all?
What do I need to do about the 3G shutdown?
I’ve heard something about 4G phones not being able to make 000 emergency calls once 3G shuts down – is that true?
3G Shutdown in Australia: Alex’s thoughts

How Do I? covers the basics, because we’ve all got to start somewhere.

Updated 24/10/2024 with comments on Telstra’s more precise shutdown plans.

Australia’s 3G networks are living on borrowed time – or, if you’re a Vodafone customer, it’s a relic of the past.

All three of the local network carriers – that’s Telstra, Optus and TPG/Vodafone – have or will have completely shut down their 3G networks by the end of October 2024.

This isn’t news, but I was recently asked via a YouTube subscriber to put down my thoughts about the whole shutdown process, which I have written about myself previously at other titles.

I figure given some of the confusion, it’s worth quickly going over the basics of what’s happening and why first, but if you’re au fait with that, you can skip ahead to my thoughts about how the whole process is being handled.

When will 3G be shut down in Australia?

The answer to this depends on the underlying network you’re using for your mobile or mobile broadband services.

Vodafone starting shutting down its 3G network starting in December 2023, concluding in January 2024. You can read Vodafone’s guide to 3G shutdown here.

Telstra originally planned to cut the virtual 3G wires from the 30th of June 2024 before deciding to delay that date through to the 31st of August 2024.

Telstra has now shifted that date back again to the 28th of October.
Telstra’s guide to its 3G shutdown can be found here.

Optus was going to be the last of Australia’s networks to kill 3G, with its planned shutdown due to occur September 2024. However in concert with Telstra at nearly-the-last minute, it has instead opted to extend out to the same October 28th date to start shutting its 3G network in Australia.

Here’s Optus’ explainer about its own 3G shutdown.

Basically, by the end of October 2024, there won’t be any 3G networks operating in Australia at all.

Will 3G shut down everywhere at once in Australia?

No. The cessation of 3G services will be on a rolling basis, but that’s not a reason to think that you can just ignore the issue.

In a blog post, Telstra’s Channa Seneviratne notes that:

Tasmania will be the first state to have its 3G network switched off. It is a state that doesn’t share borders so we’re able to have better control of the overall experience to ensure the transition is as smooth as possible before we close down the mainland states and territories. The rest of Australia will be completed by Monday 4 November.

While Optus hasn’t made similar statements, it’s not unlikely that it will work to a similar kind of timeframe.

I’m not with Telstra, Optus or TPG/Vodafone – can I still stay on 3G?

Nope.

While there are numerous “brands” for mobile services, they’re essentially digital fronts selling access to only three networks, so when 3G goes on Telstra, it’ll also go on Belong, when it goes on Optus it’ll vanish from amaysim, and Vodafone’s 3G shutdown has already cut the 3G cord for Kogan Mobile customers, to name but a few.

You might not know who the underlying operator (if you want to get technical about it, they’re called “MVNOs”, or Mobile Virtual Network Operators) are, and that’s fine. I’m not going to reinvent the wheel here and list them all out; here’s Reviews.Org Australia’s fine guide to Australia’s MVNO networks for your perusal. 

Why shut down 3G in Australia at all?

On the surface this might seem like a decent enough question, because we’ve had 3G networks in Australia now across multiple decades, and the system works. It ain’t broke, so why break it, right?

The answer is one of mobile network capacity, and the wireless spectrum that each of the three mobile networks have legal access to. There’s only so much to go around, in essence.

Mobile network analogies nearly always devolve down to discussions about roads, but I’m going to remix that slightly and instead talk about… paths.

Not that radical a reinvention, but work with me here…

Imagine you’ve got a path through a forest that people walk along. It’s muddy, it’s basic, but it works for people wanting to walk. All fine, can last for a good long time albeit not that pleasant in bad weather with the mud and the bears and all.

Then the bicycle gets invented, and we can all zip through the forest much faster avoiding the bears… except that the path is muddy and full of stones, and everyone has to cycle through really slowly to avoid crashing.

The solution here is a better paved path, using the latest “brick” technology to make a smoother surface that’s faster and better in differing conditions.

That’s – minus perhaps the bears – is why Australia’s 3G networks are being decommissioned.

There’s only so much space – in this case mobile network spectrum – for our mobile network paths to travail, and removing the older, slower 3G paths makes it possible to put in more 4G and 5G paths, offering faster and more stable connections that can be shared amongst more users.

We’ve already been through this process back when 2G networks back in 2016, and at some point in the future the same will happen to 4G and 5G networks as 6G and (presumably, there’s no standards yet that I know of) 7G networks come in.

What do I need to do about the 3G shutdown?

The key thing to do before those Telstra or Optus shutdown dates is to check your mobile device and specifically its underlying network access technologies – and I know, that sounds all kinds of “techy” and scary, but it’s actually a pretty easy process.

If you’re a Vodafone customer this doesn’t really apply to you – 3G is no more on Vodafone – though I guess if your phone has been really quiet and not connecting for data for a while now, that would be a big red flag.

The easiest way to check on a phone is to send a quick SMS to your underlying carrier, and helpfully, it’s the same process across both Telstra and Optus networks.

Simply SMS “3” to 3498, and you should receive an SMS back indicating what the network identifies your phone as, and whether you need to take any additional steps.

For example, while it’s a much newer phone and not at all affected by the 3G shutdown, here’s the message I got doing that check from an iPhone 15 Pro with Telstra:

Phone number redacted for privacy reasons, but you get the idea

If you do get a text back indicating an issue, then it’s time – right now – to look into getting a new handset.

Great, so I’m on the hook for thousands of dollars. Screw you, Telstra/Optus/Vodafone!

Look, you can spend a lot on a new phone if you’re so inclined, but you 100% do not have to in order to get past this particular hurdle.

20 seconds of checking online with Australia’s big two supermarkets finds a number of phones retailing for between $30-$50 outright.

They’re not fancy units, and may be locked to a particular network – it’s worth checking beforehand – but they would absolutely get past this particular 3G issue.

I’ve heard something about 4G phones not being able to make 000 emergency calls once 3G shuts down – is that true?

The answer to that is that for most 4G phones – and absolutely anything you’re likely to have purchased as an actually new device in the past few years – you’re perfectly fine and safe, and will be able to contact Australia’s emergency services after 3G networks fly off into the great spectrum graveyard in the sky.

However, there are some very early 4G phones that omitted the capability to make voice calls over 4G networks, using an underlying technology called VoLTE (or Voice over LTE).

They were 3G phones for calls and 4G phones for data purposes. Some phones for practical safety purposes allowed for VoLTE for everyday calls but only work with 3G networks for emergency calls, which is where this concern – an entirely understandable one – springs from.

Which phones?

This is where it gets a little more complex, because there’s kind of three classes of phones that may be affected this way.

Firstly, there’s considerably older phones sold in Australia for Australian networks that simply worked that way; we’re talking phones from 2016 or older here. If you’ve managed to make your smartphone last eight years or more, well done for getting the most out of it… but the time is probably right for an upgrade.

However it’s also emerged as an issue that some people who have purchased phones considerably more recently than 2016 might be getting text messages or message prompts when making calls indicating that their “newer” (to them) phones are also affected.

What’s happening here for the most part is that they’ve purchased refurbished phones through Australian retailers, but the underlying hardware of those phones has come from international phone models that weren’t built to cover Australian network bands. It’s an understandable frustration, because you might think that all models of say, iPhone are the same… but they’re not.

In that situation, and especially if you purchased your new-to-you-but-refurbished phone only to find it’s about to stop working, I suspect (I’m not a lawyer, this is not legal advice, but still…) that you’d have a decent case under Australian Consumer Law for a refund. It appears that at least one major retailer of refurbished phones is doing just that for recently purchased phones, as per Choice.

This also brings in another group of users who may be impacted because they’ve purchased international models of phones (or phones never sold here in Australia at all; I’ve had some correspondence with fans of Sony’s Xperia phones especially on this score) that may meet the technical specifications (though not always) that may be getting responses indicating issues with their handsets.

Here your redress is, unfortunately a lot less; you’re less likely to get a refund or similar from an international retailer, and the telcos aren’t all that interested (it seems) in adding in support for phones that were never built for (or in some cases, tested on) Australian networks.

This does raise the interesting spectre of what happens to visiting tourists with those handsets and their ability to make emergency calls in the future, too.

The smart play here again is to SMS “3” to 3498, because my understanding there is that affected phone users should be told if they’re part of the group that might be affected by that issue.

However, if you are, the time is now to arrange an alternative handset, because those handsets will be blocked from network access from the 28th of October 2024.

One additional point to make here:

Under no circumstances should you dial 000 to see if it’s still working for you.

Yeah, I know, a little bold there, but emergency services are for emergencies… and it’s actually a criminal offense to make non-emergency calls. So, you know, don’t do that.

3G Shutdown in Australia: Alex’s thoughts

In all honesty, I think Australia’s telco networks are handling the 3G shutdown mostly as well as they could.

Having worked through the shutdown of the 2G network, in some ways they’re doing a better job of it, making sure there’s a decent quantity of easily understood information out there to help consumers.

At a technical level, it’s absolutely a needed step; you might think that you don’t “need” 4G or 5G for your mobile phone uses, but even if you are a voice-only kind of user, the additional capacity and potential reach for those networks should ensure better telecommuncations services for you across the board.

I do get that for some Australians on limited incomes, even asking for an additional $30-$50 for a replacement handset in these challenging financial times is a big ask, for sure.

It’s well worth talking to your telco about what they might be able to to do help out; Optus for example has announced a limited rollout of 20,000 handsets for affected customers, and it’s not in the telco’s interests to lose customers at all.

No, you won’t suddenly be gifted a Razr 50 Ultra for nothing – anything you get discounted or for free will almost certainly be a pretty basic model – but it’s worth at least checking with them.

As a reminder, while your old 3G handset might no longer work on Australia’s mobile networks come October, that doesn’t mean it’s going to stop working full stop.

Anything involving data, whether that’s social media, gaming or web browsing over Wi-Fi would work just fine, so please don’t just bin your old mobile phone.

If you genuinely can’t use it any more (or don’t want to), services like Mobile Muster can help you responsibly recycle them

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