The largest European economy has serious coverage issues, and not just in isolated areas but also in large cities such as Berlin and Munich. A study found that mobile networks run at speeds slower than in Albania
3G shut off some years ago. It’s 2G which is still around mostly for emergency purposes, slated to shut down 2028-2030. Companies really don’t like wasting frequency bands on old standards but you can’t just cut off e.g. car and elevator emergency phones.
All German providers had it shut down by 2021, Denmark by 2023, so best explanation that I have is that some 4G stuff got reported as 3G by your phone, the terminology isn’t unified and in particular there’s a “maximum bandwidth” definition around which your phone might’ve used, not everything that’s 4G from a technical POV is actually fast enough to fulfil that definition.
2G hardware indeed doesn’t cost the telecoms anything 4G/5G hardware can do 2G just fine, but there’s opportunity costs in the form of underused frequency spectrum. The airwaves aren’t cables, we can’t just run a second one to double the total available bandwidth.
I was surprised I found 3g mobile networks still available while we have shut them off in Italy years ago.
5g is almost useless if you compare speed and range to 4g (similar speed with much more range) but 3g is getting old now.
3G shut off some years ago. It’s 2G which is still around mostly for emergency purposes, slated to shut down 2028-2030. Companies really don’t like wasting frequency bands on old standards but you can’t just cut off e.g. car and elevator emergency phones.
It’s perfectly ok to keep 2g for iot devices and they cost nothing to maintain but I’m almost sure I connected to 3g last year in northern Germany.
All German providers had it shut down by 2021, Denmark by 2023, so best explanation that I have is that some 4G stuff got reported as 3G by your phone, the terminology isn’t unified and in particular there’s a “maximum bandwidth” definition around which your phone might’ve used, not everything that’s 4G from a technical POV is actually fast enough to fulfil that definition.
2G hardware indeed doesn’t cost the telecoms anything 4G/5G hardware can do 2G just fine, but there’s opportunity costs in the form of underused frequency spectrum. The airwaves aren’t cables, we can’t just run a second one to double the total available bandwidth.