A new Opinium survey of 2,000 UK adults, which was commissioned by Uswitch.com and conducted on 7th Jan 2025, has claimed that more than 4.3 million Brits could potentially be left without access to mobile broadband if they don’t upgrade their device before O2 switches-off their 3G service (inc. MVNO’s Tesco Mobile, GiffGaff and Sky Mobile etc.).
Just to recap. Back in 2023 O2 (Virgin Media) became the final operator to reveal their plan for switching off their old 3G mobile data network (here), which will begin and end this year (withdrawal will occur in phases). O2 then followed that by announcing that they’d also start shifting almost all remaining traffic and customers off their oldest 2G network this year too (here), but they won’t be turning that off completely for “several years” because it’s still necessary for some vital services (e.g. Smart Meters – home energy tracking).
However, the new survey claims that O2’s 3G switch-off could leave 4.3 million British people without access to mobile data, and that some 6% of respondents (almost 3 million people) on O2, Tesco Mobile, Giffgaff, Virgin Media and Sky Mobile don’t know if their phone is 4G or 5G ready. But confusingly, the same survey also states that “more than 1.3 million say they still use a 3G handset“.
Ernest Doku, telecoms expert at Uswitch.com, said:
“The 3G switch-off, which began last year, is a crucial step to free up capacity for expanding 4G and 5G networks, offering significantly faster and more reliable connectivity than 3G.
While the majority of customers do have a 4G or 5G compatible phone, there will still be a proportion of customers with older devices who will need to upgrade this year.
If you’re still using an older phone, you can check your device’s 4G and 5G compatibility by looking for ‘Network Mode’ or ‘Prefered Network’ under ‘Network’ or ‘Mobile Data’ in your Settings. If you see 4G or 5G, your phone is compatible.
If you do need to upgrade, there are plenty of affordable options out there, and it may be worth looking into a refurbished device if you’re not looking for the latest launches and don’t want a costly upgrade.
It’s also worth running a coverage check for your area – Ofcom has one on its website – especially if you live rurally and have previously relied on 3G. Most of the country has strong 4G or 5G coverage, but it’s always a good idea to check which networks have the best coverage in the places you frequent most.
The 3G switch-off is an important step in moving us towards a faster and more reliable service, but consumers must be fully aware of their network plans and how it might impact their device.”
At this point we’d have to sound a note of caution, as Uswitch are known for surveys like this, which don’t always reflect reality. Both EE and Vodafone have already switched-off their 3G services and, while a small portion of users did lose data connectivity, the issues did not seem to cause any truly wide scale problems and some areas saw a positive outcome (here). Three UK are about to finish their 3G switch-off, and it’s a similar story (here).
Mobile operators have generally been compensating for the 3G switch-off in some areas by introducing upgrades to newer 4G and 5G services and supporting customers with 3G-only devices (e.g. offering handset upgrades and extra support to vulnerable users). The removal of 3G also freed up some radio spectrum that can be re-farmed for use by more modern services, which could boost network performance.
On the other hand, there’s still not really enough research in this area to be able to draw any firm conclusions about the overall impact, although we also haven’t seen a huge avalanche of complaints (you’d expect to see that if millions were cut-off). We thus suspect the portion of consumers who do experience a strongly negative outcome will be very small (i.e. those in areas where 3G is switched off and there’s no viable 4G or 5G signal to replace it, although 2G will often still exist as a fallback for voice and texts).
Digging deeper. Uswitch notes that only 875 respondents to their survey used an O2 based mobile service. But of those, just 51 said they knew their phone is not 4G or 5G ready and 110 did not know. So, for those who don’t know or know they are not 4G or 5G compatible, the comparison site calculated 159/2000 = 8.0% multiplied by the adult population (54,196,443) to get that 4.3 million.
The sample size here is tiny and doesn’t take account of how much impact O2’s support campaign, end-user device changes and network upgrades will have as the switch-off occurs. Take with a sizeable pinch of salt. On the other hand, O2 does perhaps support more legacy 3G devices than rival operators, which could prove to be a challenge to migrate. Time will tell.