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Comment by supertrope | Hacker News Reader

It's the right trade off for most people as the only USA 2G nationwide network is T-Mobile's. They are going to turn it off in April 2 2024 (1).

There's some regional carriers in rural areas that offer the only coverage available. Like Commnet Wireless (2). These are few and far between and usually they have deployed 3G to their whole footprint. The Big Three are building out native coverage to overlap with them. But by Murphy's Law someone with an Android 14 phone is going to discover that they can't call anything but 911. Ideally there would be a button prompt enabled in No Service situations to re-enable 2G. FCC rules mandate that cellphones must support fallback to null cipher if that's what's needed to connect an emergency call.

(1) https://www.t-mobile.com/support/coverage/t-mobile-network-e...

(2) https://www.cellularmaps.com/regional-carriers/commnet-wirel...

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> It's the right trade off for most people as the only USA 2G nationwide network is T-Mobile's. They are going to turn it off in April 2 2024 (1).

A US-only analysis of this seems not especially useful, since Android is used worldwide. If anything it is more popular outside of the US than inside of the US, making US-based analysis even less illuminating.

Given you can get a relatively fast 4G connection in Deadhorse, AK (https://www.google.com/maps/place/Deadhorse,+Prudhoe+Bay,+AK...), it's pretty crazy that there's still places with 2G only connectivity anywhere in the US.

Plenty of places I still get no service at all in northern Minnesota.

Wi-Fi calling has been a godsend in the rural Midwest, as you can at least make calls at home.

North Dakota too. There's a dead spot between Grand Forks and Devil's Lake. That used to sketch me out when I would drive home for Christmas.

I was somewhere between Hazen and Bismarck recently and had no signal.

Mountains block cell signal, cell service is available but is very spotty in mountainous areas. Deadhorse, Alaska is in a flat field.

True, but some of the LTE bands are the lowest licensed carrier frequency cellular service - they should be the most reliable. Like b71 (600MHz) and b12/13/14/17/28/29/67/85/103 (700MHz) blocks. [1] There's really no reason for 2G only connectivity anywhere in the US other than underinvestment in rural communities no?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LTE_frequency_bands

Absolutely, but there probably only needs to be a single cell tower in Deadhorse, where a rural mountainous region would need several to serve a smaller area if the signal is getting blocked, which would be more expensive.

Deadhorse is remote geographically, but it's the hub of oil operations for the entire North Slope, so there's demand for corporate connectivity and not just personal cell phones. there's been a fiber line out to it since 2017 [0].

the remote areas with less connectivity are probably places without deep-pocketed corporate customers that would justify the expense of running fiber. I suspect large swaths of the Alaskan interior fall under that description.

0: https://alaskapublic.org/2017/12/05/new-fiber-optic-cable-sy...

It used to be that microwave links were the alternative for such places. Not sure what's up with that these days.

Microwave and narrow focused point to point wifi is still definitely a thing in remote areas. Although with Starlink becoming very popular I wonder how long until new deployments decline.

If latency or guaranteed bandwidth matters, microwave will be better than Starlink. Of course, often neither matters in ultra remote areas.

Starlink is LEO, it doesn't have the latency issues of old-style satellite internet (indeed it can theoretically be faster than anything ground-based as soon as you're going further than ~700km).

Nobody said anything about the latency issues of GEO stationary satellites. Starlink very much has real latency differences and potential bandwidth capacity limitations vs a dedicated point to point microwave link as previously stated.

Starlink has to travel minimum of 550km twice + distance from ground station to destination server. For remote locations, you generally also have an additional satellite to satellite relay distance as well. So realistically say 1500km minimum, likely way higher. Speed of light time on that distance is ~5ms, and that doesn’t account for latency losses at each hop and also remember that’s one way time.

There’s a reason microwave is still used, even sometimes over fiber, where latency matters.

> Speed of light time on that distance is ~5ms, and that doesn’t account for latency losses at each hop and also remember that’s one way time.

So it's about +10ms to your ping for nearby destinations, less (and potentially even faster) for more distant destinations. That's really not enough to worry about in most contexts; even for FPS gaming, unless you're a pro 10ms isn't a huge difference maker.

> There’s a reason microwave is still used, even sometimes over fiber, where latency matters.

Only for HFT as far as I know; latency mattering that much is a tiny niche.

> Only for HFT as far as I know; latency mattering that much is a tiny niche.

You obviously live in a tech bubble. Remote industrial machine control definitely has concerns around guaranteed latency.

If your concern is guaranteed latency you'll choose a consistent +10ms rather than a link that goes down whenever it rains. I very much doubt there are any cases for remote industrial machine control where microwaves are the better option.

> rather than a link that goes down whenever it rains.

Oh, so you are finally conceding that Starlink doesn’t fit every use case? Because Starlink definitely goes down during a storm occasionally but a dedicated microwave link with high gain parabolic dishes won’t in the same conditions.

> I very much doubt there are any cases for remote industrial machine control where microwaves are the better option.

Oil and gas industry would beg to differ.

Does Starlink service cover as far north as upper Canada or Alaska yet?

Yes, Starlink satellites have inter-satellite laser links that can provide connectivity even if there's no base station nearby. These have been active since November 2022 [1]. They were supposed to expand coverage to most of the Arctic in early 2023 [2], which indeed seems to have happened [3].

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/Starlink/comments/yllqk6/space_lase... [2] https://www.highnorthnews.com/en/elon-musks-starlink-expands... [3] https://www.starlink.com/map

Huh, neat. I think the last time I checked the coverage extent didn't go terribly far north of the US/Canada border.

Am I misremembering? I thought Starlink coverage started up north and then creeped downwards as they deployed more satellites.

The opposite. They started with low latitudes, up to London. The initial target market was big spenders, and there are progressively fewer of those north of London. Starlink in the high north remains hit or miss, particularly in mountains.

Having just visited a few National Parks there were many cell towers with modern LTE cell radios connected to an old and badly under-provisioned microwave link. In busy parks like Yellowstone the cell service was effectively unusable. The background traffic from the phones in people's pockets (checking email, checking for updates, downloading map tiles or getting directions, etc...) was enough to bring the entire system to its knees.

I was thinking that they were way overdue to replace those microwave dishes with a Starlink terminal.

Yeah, it's not a great argument to cherry pick a place that has 4G and then remark at the fact that it has 4G. The point isn't that given one specific remote settlement you selected on the map it would be extremely difficult to deliver 4G connectivity to that settlement. The point is that there are a ton of remote settlements and it would be extremely difficult to deliver 4G connectivity to all of them.

I have been to Deadhorse AK, it is a pretty cool oil rig town probably producing billions dollars worth of oil each year, more than many US towns. So Please dont compare it with rural areas.

Deadhorse also has a fully functioning commercial airport with Alaska Air flights that are "free" for the workers there.

Your comment gives me an odd vibe that seems to imply a towns "worth" equates to its GDP

Worth is a subjective concept, Yosemite might have negative GDP but might be worth very high value for many of us due to its natural beauty. We are talking here about cellphone towers, availability of good infra will mostly dependent on GDP of that region.

That's not what he said, though. It's an explanation for why a specific rural town would have 4G while others don't.

It obviously doesn’t, but GDP roughly correlates to the profitability of expanding a network to that area. As others have mentioned, there are many awesome, very remote areas that would never be economically viable to provide cell coverage.

>Deadhorse also has a fully functioning commercial airport with Alaska Air flights that are "free" for the workers there.

neat, I didn't realize the US had anything like 'company towns' anymore, hopefully they avoid the paternalism stuff that ruined company towns in the previous centuries.

There is a multi-year waiting list to live in this company town near a large copper pit and mill in Arizona. https://www.morencitown.com/residents#housing

Deadhorse is owned by BP and every tourist needs to show ID to enter. It has fancy hotels with free buffets inside, lot of big and tough machines and even tougher people. Lots of old people to manning businesses inside.

No, the Dalton Highway terminates at Deadhorse, you need permission to go past it.

No to what ? Yes you need permission to enter the BP town.

I'm sold. Booking holiday now...

Meanwhile I'm 10 miles from a city of 100k people and I have no cellular service at all. Trees suck for phone signals.

Meanwhile I'm 10 miles from a city of 100k people and I have no cellular service at all. Trees suck for phone signals.

I've lived in the heart of a 2M+ city, and the skyscrapers made reception so difficult that AT&T gave me a free pico cell for my apartment.

it's pretty crazy that there's still places with 2G only connectivity anywhere in the US.

There are places in California that only have 3G, as of last month when I visited one.

It's a different world outside the Bay Area bubble.

The cell service isn't especially great everywhere in the Bay Area either (or even 'Silicon Valley' for that matter)

The outdoor mall in Alameda has notoriously awful coverage. It was so annoying that I called Verizon to complain about it. The operator said that the population density was too low to support good coverage there (WTF), and that also the trees there block the signal (I could see a Verizon tower from the parking lot where I was standing, and you can see from one end of the island to another from the upper floor of tall houses).

I will never understand how the powers that be decide where to deploy coverage.

Yep. Go down Stevens Canyon Road and you’ll lose cell service in minutes.

Alaskan and touring musician here. Coverage on the road system up here is great, believe it or not. In 2015, my band was on tour Outside, and as we headed through spokane, across Idaho heading to Missoula, I ached with anticipation: I was gonna play Montana by Frank Zappa as soon as we crossed the border.

That didn't happen for a solid 30 or 40 miles, because none of us had signal. And that was on an interstate.

... I was always hoping that if my phone was intercepted by a stingray I could call 911 and it would ring in the police car.

you win. you win with this post. i can see the cop dropping his hot dog and getting mustard on his uniform. "there's been this creepy car outside my house for days, could someone come check it out?"

The idea of 911 working by patching you directly to an officers phone cracks me up

I am curious what rural areas have 2G only. I've driven all over the contiguous US and hit plenty of "No Service" and 3G, but never 2G (T-Mobile Samsung S22).

It'll be more a case of the 3G areas being smaller and no signal areas being larger.

This is a T-Mobile rant about them turning off non-LTE 4G service. T-Mobile is still providing non-LTE 4G, but they will not let you activate a new non-LTE 4G device on their network. Last year I tried to do this. Before I did anything, I called them and asked if I could activate a new non-LTE 4G device. They told me it would not be a problem. Activation went fine, but after a few days, the device stopped working. I spent hours with Tech Support trying to solve it, but we couldn't, so they had me go to the store and get a new SIM. The new SIM worked fine for a few days, but then the device stopped working. Troubleshooting on my own, I swapped the SIM with a different non-LTE 4G T-Mobile device on the same account (iPad Pro). Both devices began working! After swapping the SIMs back, they both continued to work, but the new one stopped working after a few days. I called T-Mobile Tech Support again and confronted them with this proof that the SIMs and devices were fine, but service on the new device would fail after working for a few days. After hours more, they found some Tech Bulletin they were unaware of that explained it this way; Any device activated after (some day I forgot in 2022) will cease to function unless it registers 4G LTE service with a tower every 24 hours. T-Mobile would have to have written a script to implement this, and they clearly did it only for marketing purposes. My non-LTE 4G iPad Pro (2016) still works great, but I had to replace the other non-LTE 4G device with something newer. Note: I had used that same device on the T-Mobile network for several years before temporarily deactivating it for six months and then trying to re-activate it. If I had re-activated it a month earlier, it would have worked fine.

TLDR; Cellular providers make money by selling you new equipment, and they will claim a device is unsupported even when it's not true.

Which is interesting, because earlier this year in the UK, I was getting repeated nagging texts from my mobile provider that they were switching off 3G, and that 2G would be the fallback.

There are a lot of M2M devices that support 2G (or 3G) only, so it makes sense to leave a small amount of spectrum on 2G.

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