The timetable for the disappearance of 2G and 3G is becoming clearer in France. At the start of 2022, Orange showed the way by giving itself six years to switch off these less and less used networks in France. The shutdown of 2G is planned by the end of 2025, while 3G will say goodbye in 2028. In the rest of Europe, the signal will be completely cut off by 2030.
After Orange, SFR undertook at the beginning of the year to disconnect these two generations of telecom networks still used by certain GPS and emergency call systems in elevators. The red-squared brand plans to deactivate 2G at the end of 2026 and 3G at the end of 2028. By doing so, the two operators are drawing a line under several decades, 2G having been deployed in the 1990s, before 3G take over at the beginning of the new millennium.
Freed up frequencies for 4G and 5G networks
By abandoning these venerable mobile networks, the operators intend to put an end to a technological piling up which slows down the deployment of more recent telecom technologies. Indeed, Orange, SFR and others need to free up frequencies to reallocate them to 4G, today the most used network in Europe, but also to 5G being deployed.
Frequencies are also particularly expensive, as evidenced by the auction process for the allocation of 5G, which brought in nearly 2.8 billion euros for the State in 2020. In this context, recovering 2G and 3G frequencies constitutes a good business to reinject them into the 4G and 5G networks at lower costs.
A lever to promote the take-off of industrial 5G?
More frequencies available will obviously allow operators to make their 4G/5G networks more fluid for individuals, but it is above all professionals who will benefit from this technological shift. And for good reason, the frequencies released by Orange and SFR on the 2G-3G segment have virtues that are particularly coveted in the sector, in particular better penetration into buildings. Very useful for factories, for example, while industrial 5G is struggling to take off in France.
A report submitted to the government on this subject already estimated in 2022 that the country is far from the mark. However, industrial 5G is crucial to switch to the 4.0 era, which aims to improve the circulation and use of data on production sites in order to optimize their operation. Also known as 5G standaloneit enables throughput increase and latency reduction not possible with mainstream 5G, and supports the network slicingi.e. the compartmentalization of the network between different tasks and/or connected devices.
Alas, this type of private network dedicated to manufacturers is still rare. In this same report, several barriers to development were identified. According to the authors, the main obstacle would be none other than the current access to frequencies. “It appears from the hearings carried out as part of the 5G industrial mission that the terms of access to the 2.6 GHz TDD band, in particular the effective cost of the fee, as well as the maturity of the offers offered elsewhere, do not allow not developing to its full potential”, they say. The situation could therefore change by the end of the decade with the disappearance of 2G and 3G networks, which will allow operators to reallocate part of the freed up frequencies to 5G.
Free-Nokia partnership to equip “the largest 5G connected factory in Europe”
In the meantime, experiments are multiplying. Among them, the partnership concluded between Iliad (parent company of Free) and Nokia entered a new phase last year with the deployment of 5G coverage in the Alcatel Submarine Networks (ASN) factory in Calais (Hauts-de- France), specializing in the manufacture of submarine communication cables.
As part of this initiative, 59 5G antennas were installed by teams from Free Mobile and Free Pro, covering an area of 50,000 m² out of the 160,000 m² at the industrial site. According to Xavier Niel’s group and the Finnish equipment manufacturer, the latter is now “the largest 5G connected factory in Europe” with new use cases, such as the digitization of manufacturing procedures, remote maintenance assistance or the analysis of production incidents.
While some industrial players are turning to 5G, companies managing connected objects (payment terminals, alarms, cars, etc.) will have to adapt quickly, as a large proportion of these devices still communicate in 2G/3G. They will therefore have to renew their equipment so that they are 4G and 5G compatible, otherwise they will be in the dark before 2030. This technological change is all the more urgent as telecom players are already preparing the ground for 6G, while 5G is not yet available everywhere in France.
