Telefónica keen to join Germany's 3G shutdown club

Telefónica's O2 business in Germany has announced it will shut down its 3G network earlier than planned.

Instead of flicking the switch by the end of the year, the operator now says 3G lights will start going off in earnest next month and that the last large-scale shutdowns will be done and dusted by mid-November.

O2 Germany said it had already started shutting down 3G in individual regions on July 1, and then decided to move faster than originally planned given the improved 4G performance from freeing up 3G spectrum for LTE. Around a third of the operator's 16,000 3G sites nationwide have now been converted for 4G use.

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"With the complete switch from 3G to 4G, we are setting the course for an even more powerful O2 network as well as a significantly better network experience for our customers," explained Mallik Rao, O2 Germany's CTIO.

"4G has long been the backbone of digital networking. We supply over 99% of the population with 4G and are consistently expanding. At the same time, we are concentrating on our 5G expansion in order to ignite the digitization turbo in the country."

3G catch-up

Despite Rao's fine words O2 Germany is late to the 3G shutdown party. Vodafone Germany, in plans unveiled in May, said it would shutter its 3G network by June 30 and then re-farm its entire 20MHz block of 2.1GHz frequencies for LTE. Vodafone Germany, as part of a 3G wind-down plan, had previously allocated 15MHz of its 2.1GHz block to 4G.

This week Vodafone Germany declared that the re-farming of 3G spectrum for LTE was almost complete and that 4G Internet speeds, on average, had increased between 15% and 20%.

Telekom Deutschland had also previously announced plans to close down 3G by June 30, although, as far as Light Reading can determine, has not provided a recent update on the spectrum re-farming progress.

— Ken Wieland, contributing editor, special to Light Reading