Your HTC Hero will live on just a little bit longer
CDMA networks are a dying breed. With nearly all modern smartphones now supporting 5G — and the widespread adoption of 4G LTE — the need to keep older technologies around is dwindling. With some customers still stuck on a legacy network, it’s not a process that can happen overnight. T-Mobile has been planning to shut down Sprint’s CDMA network for a while now, but this date has been pushed back to assist those few remaining CDMA users.
T-Mobile has announced that its Sprint CDMA shutdown will be finalized by March 31st, 2022, three months after its previous January 1st timeframe. The company has also offered some context — and a few stern comments — on why the date is being pushed back. According to the carrier, some of its “partners” have failed to fulfill their obligations to assist customers transitioning out of Sprint’s CDMA network, so the carrier’s pushing the move back three months to ensure “no one is left on the wrong side of the digital divide.”
Although these partners remain unnamed in this particular blog post, it’s not hard to piece together the culprit. In 2020, Dish purchased Boost from T-Mobile as part of its agreement with the Department of Justice to acquire Sprint, and the two companies have been at war ever since. Just two months ago, T-Mobile’s CEO Mike Sievert published a scathing blog post, accusing Dish of “dragging their feet” in moving its customers to 4G or 5G-compatible devices.
It’s the latest delay for its plans to move away from legacy technology altogether. T-Mobile began communicating its plans to shut down CDMA as early as last year, but the hard cut-off date had always been set “on or around January 1st, 2022.” While Sprint’s date had been set in stone until now, other plans, including shutdown dates for its own 2G and 3G networks, have been pushed back a couple of times.
The carrier also says that this decision won’t impact T-Mobile’s 5G expansion plans for 2022, and users should expect 5G infrastructure to keep growing just as rapidly. T-Mobile’s 5G connectivity is currently the clear winner in the United States when it comes to speed and reliability, according to OpenSignal. It seems the company wants to kill CDMA as soon as possible to finish building out its 5G network to its full potential.
If you have a Sprint-compatible CDMA phone, you can expect it to continue to work for a few more months. That said, you might want to look into selecting a new device as soon as possible.
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