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Cellular antennas in Kiel in 2010: "Getting old"
Photo: Carsten Rehder / dpa
What began a good 20 years ago with the auction of UMTS licenses at record prices is now coming to an end: The network operator Telefónica with its brand O2 announced that it would shut down the last 300 of its 3G locations on Thursday.
The company wants to use the freed up frequencies for the faster successor 4G.
Competitors Vodafone and Deutsche Telekom pulled the plug on the outdated 3G standard back in the summer, and Telefónica also began to switch it off step by step.
The technology was "getting on in years, so we will replace it at the end of the year," said Telefónica Germany boss Markus Haas.
What is out of date today was innovative and in great demand a good two decades ago: the UMTS auction carried out in 2000 brought 98.8 billion marks (around 50 billion euros) into the state's coffers.
In retrospect, that was too much, the telecommunications industry lacked money for the expansion, and dead spots continued to shape Germany's mobile phone card for a long time.
In the meantime, the telecommunications companies have improved their networks and are currently focusing on the ultra-fast 5G standard when expanding.
The consequences of the 3G shutdown are hardly noticeable to consumers because most smartphones have long been 4G-compatible.
According to "Verivox", all branded smartphones that have been released in Germany since 2016 have been 4G / LTE-capable.
Problems may only arise with older smartphones - but from now on you can still use them to make calls using the 2G standard or to set up Internet connections, which all three network operators continue to offer.
However, it is extremely slow, which hinders the use of today's applications such as TikTok: A maximum of 256 kilobits per second is reached in the download.
Providers usually replace outdated SIM cards free of charge.
Most contracts were also automatically expanded to include 4G reception.
pbe / dpa