Summary
- 3G is effectively dead in the US, with AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon having phased it out in 2022. Smaller carriers and MVNOs are dependent on the Big Three, so there was no way 3G could keep going.
- The move freed up spectrum for 4G and 5G connectivity, which is not only more relevant to consumers, but cheaper for US carriers to operate. 4G is also common enough in the country to cover many rural areas.
- A few Canadian carriers still support 3G, but that compatibility is quickly disappearing, and could be gone completely by 2027. Mexico’s Telcel still actively supports 3G, likely for the sake of the most remote regions.
It’s tough to remember now given the constant barrage of technology news, but in the late 2000s, people talked about 3G the way we’re used to hearing about 5G today. Carriers and phone makers bragged about it as cutting-edge, a way of enabling things never before dreamt of on a phone. And they were right, to a degree — on 2G, browsing the simplest webpage can be excruciating, never mind using an app like Google Maps. Without 3G, smartphones would’ve been little more than Palm Pilots beyond Wi-Fi range. Palm Pilots were PDAs, for those of you under 30. And no, PDA doesn’t stand for “personal displays of affection” in this case.
You’ve probably noticed that 3G is increasingly rare or absent in modern life, even when you drive down rural roads where 5G might as well be a myth. At some point, you may have also received a notification that your carrier was winding down its 3G network. But is 3G truly dead and gone forever in North America? I went hunting for the truth this week, and discovered a few surprises in the process.
It turns out that it’s still lingering like a phantom — in spite of having first burst onto the scene in mid-2002, before many of you had been born, let alone knew what a smartphone was. Carriers don’t seem to be interested in planned obsolescence. If anything, they’ve been reluctant to let 3G go, particularly in Canada and Mexico.
The state of 3G in the United States
Ghosts, only ghosts
Effectively, 3G is dead and gone in the US, regardless of where you travel. AT&T began phasing out 3G in February 2022, according to the Federal Communications Commission. T-Mobile completed the process in July that year, having already killed off Sprint’s old 3G CDMA network in March (T-Mobile acquired Sprint in April 2020). The slowest of the Big Three carriers was Verizon, which wrapped up the transition on December 31, 2022.
There are, of course, many smaller carriers in the country, ranging from Appalachian Wireless to Viaero Wireless, and some better-known brands like C Spire, Boost Mobile, and Cricket Wireless. But even these appear to have transitioned to 4G (also known as LTE) at a minimum, and realistically, none of them have the infrastructure to supplant the Big Three. Your phone will inevitably end up talking to a tower owned by AT&T, T-Mobile, or Verizon at some point. Some carriers are Mobile Virtual Network Operators (MVNOs), relying entirely on one of those networks. Others are pre-paid sub-brands of the Big Three, meant to snare your business in case you can’t afford an expensive post-paid plan. Cricket is owned by AT&T, for example. Metro belongs to T-Mobile, and so on.
It doesn’t make any financial sense to keep 3G going, which is why carriers have been willing to hand out free phone upgrades.
Why would US carriers collectively decide to eliminate 3G? The leading answer is bandwidth. Shutting it down frees up the radio spectrum for better 4G and 5G connectivity. 4G coverage has also become (relatively) cheap and widespread, so there’s no need to offer a slower alternative, particularly when there’s not much you can do with it on a state-of-the-art smartphone or tablet. 3G was acceptable for phones in 2005, but in 2025, most app and website developers take 4G for granted. Something as basic as a calorie-counting app would probably take forever to load nutrition data over 3G. As I recently discovered, 4G is already holding some apps back, namely navigation tools like Google Maps and Apple Maps. You’d be shocked at how much smoother 5G navigation can be.
The other incentive for the transition is cost. 3G isn’t as efficient as 4G and 5G in terms of spectrum or power consumption, and to keep any network running, compatible tower radios need regular inspection and maintenance. It doesn’t make any financial sense to keep 3G infrastructure active, which is why carriers have been willing to hand out free phone upgrades to people still clinging on to 2G/3G-only devices. A $200 4G or 5G phone is a drop in the bucket next to paying a technician to fix a malfunctioning 3G tower.
What about Canada and Mexico?
The last bastions
Here’s where things surprised me a little. As I discovered, 3G is rapidly evaporating in Canada, but that’s only a recent development. Rogers, Fido, and Vidéotron all ended their support on July 31, 2025, which is almost shocking if you know how much Rogers pushes its 5G service. Fido has become 4G-only — in fact, one of the reasons my wife and I jumped ship to Freedom Mobile is that Fido shut down my wife’s service prematurely, thinking she had a 3G-only device. She actually had an iPhone SE, which has always been equipped for 4G.
Mexico’s Telcel continues to support 3G, despite the growing reach of 4G and 5G networks, and rivals Movistar and AT&T Mexico shutting off compatible networks towards the end of 2024.
If you want to connect to 3G for some reason, you can still do that via Bell, Telus, and SaskTel, but they’re liable to discourage you. Bell is going to begin phasing out personal 3G on October 31, and business connections by the end of 2025, reassigning part of that spectrum to 4G before fully terminating 3G sometime in the future. Telus and SaskTel haven’t set anything in stone yet, but the writing is on the wall — I doubt any 3G will be operating in Canada by the time 2027 rolls around, including both pre-paid and post-paid carriers.
The one true haven for 3G is Mexico. Telcel continues to support it, despite the growing reach of 4G and 5G networks, and rivals Movistar and AT&T Mexico shutting off 3G towards the end of 2024. It’s a practical necessity, since there are regions where no major carrier has 4G yet, let alone the latest technology. A transition should happen at some point — but only once 4G penetrates deeper into the countryside. Conceivably, there are parts of the world that might already be adopting 6G by then.
