Bad news if you're still rocking a Motorola V600 on the AT&T Inc. (NYSE: T) network: Ma Bell wants to switch off its second generation network by 2017.

The Wall Street Journal reports Friday that AT&T revealed its schedule in a filing to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) . The operator still has 12 percent of its customers on its 2G network. It started sending out letters in March encouraging them to switch from the basic GSM service.

AT&T is not the only operator dealing with legacy networks at the moment. Sprint Corp. (NYSE: S) is pushing to get its iDEN users off the network by the end of 2013.

Why this matters
AT&T has been focused on finding more spectrum capacity since the failure of the T-Mobile US Inc. deal. The 2G closure should allow it to make more effective use of bandwidth on 850MHz and 1900MHz networks as many will likely switch to 3G on the same bands.

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— Dan Jones, Site Editor, Light Reading Mobile