How the disappearance of the 3G phone network will affect your car
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AT&T's 3G phone network was shut down, and with it, millions of cars lost some of the features that required such a connection. The most common issues include problems with GPS navigation, WiFi hotspots, as well as vehicle lock/unlock and on-board cellular services.
With AT&T's recent 3G disruption that promised to affect the connectivity of millions of vehicles, many drivers could lose features they thought they would have for life. Indeed, some drivers may have already begun to suffer the consequences of this action.
What happened to the 3G network?
The fall in 3G happened last Tuesday, February 22nd. This means that millions of connected cars will simply stop calling home when cell towers stop transmitting a signal compatible with the equipment in the car.
Sophisticated features that rely on this 3G signal, such as navigation traffic and location data, Wi-Fi hotspots, emergency call services, remote lock/unlock features, smartphone app connectivity, and more, will stop working.
You can also verify this by checking that in areas where you used to use 3G service, your phone can now display just the letter "E", which refers to EDGE technology.
What does EDGE mean in the telephone network?
The letter "E" in the nomenclature of cellular operators means "EDGE", which, in turn, is short for "increased data transfer rates for global evolution." EDGE technology acts as a bridge between 2G and 3G networks and can work on any GPRS-enabled network that has been upgraded with optional software activation.
If you cannot connect to 3G, you can connect to this network and thus move faster. Therefore, this means that when your mobile phone connects to this network, it is because it does not have access to 3G or 4G.
This technology provides speeds up to 384 kbps and allows you to receive heavy mobile data such as large email attachments or browsing complex web pages at high speed. But functionally, this means that if you find yourself in the lonely mountains of the Toyabe National Forest, you won't be able to download any entertainment from your friends, because the videos simply can't load in a reasonable amount of time.
Some car brands are already working to change that pretense.
Cars, ATMs, security systems, and even electric vehicle chargers are already struggling as this two-decade-old cellular standard is being phased out.
However, some manufacturers are working on releasing updates to keep functionality online, for example GM is updating auto services to keep them open in the absence of 3G, but it's not clear if all manufacturers can update their vehicles without a hardware upgrade.
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