Particle has been closely monitoring T-Mobile’s USA 3G Sunset, using insights from our distributed fleet to equip our customers with actionable information.
The T-Mobile 3G sunset in the USA is actively in process. Over the last 10 days, Particle observed strong signals that this 3G sunset is ramping up. At this stage, 28% of US-based Particle 2G/3G devices are connecting to the 3G T-Mobile network, an almost 6% decrease from August 9.
Signs point to the likelihood that this trend continues, potentially bringing the T-Mobile 3G network sunset to completion in the next few weeks.
T-Mobile is still maintaining the majority of its 2G infrastructure, with 3G T-Mobile devices falling back to 2G where available.
Previous 3G Sunset Updates
Want to follow Particle’s tracking of the 3G sunset across carriers? Check out the June 2022 and the April 2022 updates.
Don’t forget to check out our in-depth guide on navigating the 3G sunset for your IoT deployments.
How Particle is Managing the 3G Sunset in the United States
Here’s how Particle has helped – and is continuing to help – our customers migrate away from 2G/3G networks.
- By early 2021, we started working with our customers who had deployed 2G/3G devices to build a migration plan – well in advance of the projected sunset dates.
- Offered hardware compatibility across generations to make it easy to switch from 2G/3G to LTE.
- On an ongoing basis, we’ve monitored the impact, magnitude, and timing of the sunsets across carriers. We do that by analyzing our connectivity data for carrier exposure, geolocating devices based on cell towers and comparing their locations to known T-Mobile tower locations, and running custom firmware during off-hours to collect more information on the progress of the sunset.
The result?
We’ve helped our customers navigate these challenges by giving them greater insight into when their devices will be offline. This helps them focus their migration efforts on the most important activities and their most at-risk devices.
For Particle device-specific documentation on how to navigate the 3G sunset, please refer to our documentation here. If you aren’t a Particle customer but need to migrate a 2G/3G fleet to new technology, contact our sales team.