Global leap to 4G and 5G would cut off phone access for millions of vulnerable people.
- Telecom companies aim to profit from the 2G-to-5G transition as governments worldwide face pressure to free up mobile spectrum.
- Vietnam is the latest country to shut down 2G by offering free 4G phones to the poor.
- India and South Africa have expressed concern that the strategy would cut off phone access for millions of vulnerable people.
You will be surprised how many old people rely on health monitoring devices that use 2G to send basic data.
Not just old people. I had a heart monitor a couple years ago that’s only made for 2G.
Alright maybe I’m getting old but that’s not the point.
When I was visiting the Caribbean they also had a lot of 2G infrastructure still operating.
It sounds like there’s a really big market opportunity for somebody to make a portable transceiver that converts 2G and 3G signals into 5G…
Really really difficult to do that at scale. You don’t want random companies making cell signal transceivers.
You’d be better off just replacing the 2g transceivers entirely.
While I agree with you in principle, that’s a hard sell to somebody with an embedded 2G medical device.
Setting “companies” aside, I don’t see why it couldn’t be some sort of DIY project. Like, a small computer with a both a 2G and 5G modem, a set of antennas for each, and some middleware…
In fact, there are some phones that support both networks… So why couldn’t a spare phone be used? They technically already have all the hardware to make it work.
I’m not sure there would be an advantage. The signals are very different. That might be approximately equal to building a new one.