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Comment by mschuster91 | Hacker News Reader

Thank God I'm not in the US. I wonder what will happen to all the embedded stuff using low-power 2G chipsets because they transfer data via SMS or CSD/GPRS?

I'm especially thinking about car/truck theft systems. That's going to be expensive to retrofit these...

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I work in the automotive industry and the 2G shutdown announcement caused a bit of an uproar for car dealerships that install GPS/starter interrupt devices in the vehicles they sell (for purposes of repossession). Most dealerships buy these devices in bulk, and as I recall from a conference I went to a year or two ago only one of the major providers was offering a partial discount on the price of more modern 3G units for those with soon to be obsolete 2G stockpiles.

Australia is also shutting down 2G next year. They're trying to free up spectrum for more 4G and possibly 5G

T-Mobile has committed to keeping their 2G network operational until 2020 for these M2M devices - and they support the same GSM bands as AT&T does. Unless these device manufacturers want to rush to put LTE radios in everything they'd be wise to just replace everything with T-Mobile SIM's and work on a better upgrade plan over the next 4 years.

I don't know how comprehesive this is, but clearly AT&T is not the only one (or US the only market affected): http://www.zdnet.com/article/optus-announces-2g-network-shut...

Currently seeing this with the Nissan Leaf. It has a 2G modem built in for their Carwings service. Nissan has sent out a letter that the car will need an update for the data features to keep working, but no details on cost or availability. My local dealer has no idea either.

Are you in the UK? We're installing "smart" gas and electricity meters, which use 2G, but industry analysts are predicting the cessation of 2G here by 2020. Awesome!

Maybe it's time for swappable wireless transceivers? Something along the lines of SFP?

Won't help much, because the antenna and coax cable has to meet the correct specs for the frequencies used by the transmitter.

T-Mobile isn't shutting this down anytime soon. Those customers will have to move there (same frequencies anyway).

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