With 5G rollouts at various phases of the investment cycle, and new spectrum opportunities looming, the need for a clear sunsetting roadmap is becoming pressing – especially as SLA-backed contracts begin to conflict with planned retirements. If you’re a vendor or MNO navigating the sunsetting of cellular technology generations, contact us now to discover how this report will help shape your strategy.

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Sunsetting of cellular technology generations as they become obsolete has become a significant issue for the mobile industry because of continued reliance on 3G and 2G for a variety of legacy applications and processes in some markets. There is a huge disparity between countries, especially for 2G, whose sunsets will span up to 25 years, reflecting widely varying local circumstances.

This new report from RAN Research discusses the varying local factors, with a chart of sunset times for 2G, 3G and 4G over a 30 year timeline from 2011 to 2040. While some of those sunsets have already happened, or are imminent with clear dates set, others have yet to be finally determined.

The report includes:

• Decision factors and drivers in sunsetting, with practical strategies that take into account number of users, different applications and use-cases, and whether timelines can be set by the operators themselves or if they will be guided by country-specific regulations.
• Discussion on some of the unintended consequences of sunsetting that we have already seen and the mitigation measures that should be taken to avoid costly and embarrassing missteps in the future, including the role that Dynamic Spectrum Sharing (DSS) will play.
• Detailed coverage of 10 major countries and the key operators of each:
  – USA: AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile, Dish Network
  – Canada: Rogers, Bell, Freedom, Telus
  – UK: BT EE, VM02, Three, Vodafone
  – France: Orange, SFR, Bouygues Telecom, Free Mobile (Iliad)
  – Germany: Deutsche Telekom, O2 Telefonica, Vodafone
  – China: China Mobile, China Telecom, China Unicom
  – India: Reliance Jio, Bharti Airtel, Vodafone Idea, BSNL
  – Japan: NTT DoCoMo, AU (KDDI), SoftBank, Rakuten Mobile
  – South Korea: SK Telecom, KT, LG Uplus
  – Saudi Arabia: Saudi Telecom (STC), Mobily (Etihad Etisalat), Zain Saudi Arabia

• During our investigation, we identified a further 12 major multinational operators that must be examined due to the particular regional circumstances they encounter:
  – Globe Telekom (Philippines)
  – Telkomsel (Indonesia)
  – Telenor (Nordics and Asia)
  – Telia (Nordics and Baltics)
  – Telecom Italia (TIM) (Italy and South America)
  – Telefonica (Europe and Latin America)
  – America Movil (Latin America)
  – SingTel (Asia, Sub Saharan Africa, Australia)
  – Telstra (Australia)
  – MTS (Russia)
  – Vodacom (South Africa)
  – MTN (South Africa)