T-Mobile will reportedly download some phones from its network, and even before AT&T

Remember when AT&T told customers that their phones would stop working and encouraged them to buy new ones during a pandemic? According to reports, an internal T-Mobile document shared that T-Mobile will also send some messages like that as well, but it seems the company could do it a little differently (and hopefully less aggressively) than AT&T. by Android Police.

T-Mobile will reportedly require phones on its network to support Voice over LTE (VoLTE) beginning in January 2021. That means if your phone does not currently support VoLTE, you will need to update if you want to be able to continue making calls with that phone at T-Mobile. Apparently, T-Mobile is so intent on removing older technologies that it will reportedly stop activating new devices that don’t support VoLTE on August 4, which is only a couple of weeks away.

Here is the document. Android Police shared, if you want to search for yourself:

Image: Android Police

When asked, T-Mobile did not confirm the timeline stated in the document, but he shared some details that align:

[…]Over time, we will gradually phase out some older technologies to free up even more capacity for LTE and 5G. In preparation for that and to provide customers with the best experience, those activating new lines on T-Mobile will need a VoLTE-compatible device, which is all we’ve offered for years and represents the overwhelming majority of devices on the network. .

Basically, what T-Mobile seems to say is, unless you haven’t updated your phone for a long time, you’re likely to have no problems once VoLTE is required.

When the time comes for T-Mobile to tell some customers that they need to upgrade, we hope the company knows about AT&T’s bugs. Yesterday, AT&T scared some customers by sending them an email with the big, blue, bold, and capitalized header. “UPDATE NECESSARY,“Informing them that their phone” is not compatible with the new network “and that they will need to replace it to continue receiving service (Some customers found the email to be so notorious that they thought it was a scam).

However, what AT&T did not make clear is that those customers won’t need to update their phone until early 2022, which is when AT&T plans to shut down its 3G network and when some devices will actually stop working. Let’s hope T-Mobile is clearer about what customers should do and when they should do it.

Verizon is also in the process of shutting down its 3G network and said last year that it would delay that shutdown until the end of 2020. Starting in 2018, it no longer activates phones that are not compatible with LTE.