2degrees decommissioned 3G services on around 100 rural sites in December, then shut down 3G services in Palmerston North and Rotorua in mid January, before the full shutdown of nationwide 3G services last night. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe have been communicating with impacted customers. However, it is understandable that some individuals may have waited until the last minute to upgrade their device,\u201d chief executive Mark Callander said.<\/p>\n
Why is the plug being pulled?<\/p>\n
All three telcos are shutting down their older 3G mobile networks to concentrate on 4G and 5G \u2013 meaning some older phones won\u2019t work<\/a>, including for emergency calls, and some security and health alarms<\/a> won\u2019t work.<\/p>\n The telcos say 4G-capable phones start from $59.<\/p>\n 2%-3% still on 3G<\/p>\n Following an industry-wide publicity campaign, Spark says the number of devices on its network that rely on 3G has halved.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re now just 2% of all devices on our network still relying on 3G,\u201d a Spark spokeswoman said this morning.<\/p>\n That equates to about 50,000 devices, from phones to gadgets like Kindles and health and security alarms that rely on 3G cellular connectivity.<\/p>\n There are also some parallel-imported \u201c4G\u201d phones that don\u2019t support the VoLTE technology that Spark, One NZ and 2degrees use for 4G calling.<\/p>\n A One NZ spokesman said: \u201cLess than 3% of all devices on our network, including IoT, still rely on 2G\/3G\u201d following a 65% decline in data use and 77% fall in 2G\/3G use over the past year.<\/p>\n To see if your phone will work after your provider\u2019s 3G shutdown, text 3G to 550. <\/p>\n Spark 3G shutdown in numbers<\/p>\n Spark also released stats on 3G, 4G and 5G usage, comparing June 2025 (when the 3G shutdown date was announced) with January 2026.<\/p>\n 3G data usage down 50% and only 0.25% of Spark\u2019s total network data traffic.3G voice usage down 70%.4G data usage up 17%.5G data usage up 37%.More than 110,000 Spark customers have used the free SMS device-checker.More than 10,000 Spark customers have checked their device compatibility online.Top unsupported devices upgraded: iPhone 6 and Huawei Y5.Device most commonly upgraded to:\u00a0Galaxy A06 5G.<\/p>\n Resources<\/p>\n Chris Keall is an Auckland-based member of the Herald\u2019s business team. He joined the Herald in 2018 and is the technology editor and a senior business writer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"2degrees decommissioned 3G services on around 100 rural sites in December, then shut down 3G services in Palmerston…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":264702,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[36297,147410,74,138,8606,5907,111654,9947,141960,5504,2514,111,139,529,69,5270,151158,27793,312,7538,82855,4998],"class_list":["post-264701","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-2degrees","tag-3g","tag-after","tag-business","tag-closures","tag-completed","tag-completes","tag-delay","tag-emergencies","tag-following","tag-island","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-north","tag-nz","tag-one","tag-oneweek","tag-resumes","tag-says","tag-shutdown","tag-various","tag-weather"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/264701","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=264701"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/264701\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/264702"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=264701"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=264701"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=264701"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}