(Bloomberg) — T-Mobile US Inc. will go ahead with the planned shutdown of its two- decade-old legacy 3G wireless network after giving users more time to upgrade their phones.
“We are proceeding with the orderly shutdown of our CDMA network beginning on March 31,” a T-Mobile representative said Wednesday. The network will be completely decommissioned by May 31.
T-Mobile originally planned to retire the network at the end of 2021, but delayed the shutdown to give customers like those on Boost Mobile more time to upgrade to phones that work on newer networks. Most customers are using newer 4G and 5G services.
The T-Mo Report, an industry newsletter, said earlier that the network would shut down over two months.
In August, antitrust officials at the U.S. Justice Department said they had “grave concerns” about shutting down a wireless network used by millions of Boost Mobile customers.
The 3G network, originally built by Sprint Corp., was acquired by T-Mobile in the 2020 takeover of that carrier. Under an agreement with the government, T-Mobile sold Boost to Dish Network Corp. to create a fourth national wireless carrier.
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