It’s the early 2000s. Voice calls and text messages (SMS) make up the major reason a phone contract is chosen, with mobile phones being mainly that – a mobile version of a phone. But coming around the corner is a potential game changer in the 3rd generation of mobile networks, 3G.
Phone Networks
Mobile phone networks data back to the very late 1970s with the 1st generation (1G) which was analogue. The 2ndgeneration (2G) arrived in the 1990s, with a move to digital, the introduction of SMS and a theoretical transfer speed of 40 kbits/s. What would the 3rd generation (3G) bring? Faster speeds for more data, would customers want it?
Mobile Phones
These were the years before the smart phone. Mobile phones did voice calls, text messaging, and games such as Snake. Internet browsing was via WAP (Wireless Access Protocol) which was slow and limited. This was the time when Nokia was still popular, flip phones were big and screens were small (just look at the Ericsson T20e). If a phone produced music it was more than likely a limited ring tone that sort of sounded like a popular song if you muffled your hearing a bit.
3G
3G required a minimum transfer rate of 144 kbit/s, and later revisions such as 3.5G (HSPA) and 3.75G (HSPA+) increased this into the Mbit/s range. Phones could now browse the web without the need for WAP, and the phones started to include cameras for potential video data calls.
However, 3G really started to come into its own with the launch of phones built to utilise the new network. Nokia with its N95, Apple with the iPhone, and Google with the Android operating system. Phones stopped being mobile phones that handled voice calls and text messages. Phones became smart phones, devices that offered connectivity to the internet, with music, videos and apps at fingertip access. Screens were no longer tiny and restrained by keypads, instead they dominated and destroyed the reign of keys.
And the rise of social media (e.g. MySpace, Facebook, Twitter) gave more reason for people to be connected to the internet, which there 3G enabled device allowed them to be.
The End of a Generation
But 3G didn’t rule for long. By the first half of the 2010s the UK had started to experience 4G (more bandwidth, speeds in the Mbit/s range), surely the end of 3G? Well, it wasn’t at the time, and it took until December 2021 for the UK government to announce the retirement of 3G in the UK with the 3G network to be switched off by 2033 but the retirement then sped up.
With only 3% of mobile data traffic in the UK using 3G (figure from February 2024) the UK’s Mobile Network Operators (MNOs) begun to switch off 3G from their networks. EE and Vodafone switched it off in early 2024. Three switched it off in late 2025. O2 (VMO2) began switching it off during 2025.
To 4G and Beyond?
4G and 5G are both available in the UK at the time of this blog post (December 2025). Both offer more speed compared to 3G. However, in perhaps a slightly strange turn of events, 2G is also still available in the UK. It was part of the same UK government announcement for retirement by 2033, but 2G has wider coverage than 4G and remains important for providing voice/text services (i.e. not data) in rural areas so has been survived past 3G.