2G or not 2G that isn’t the question?

When we started Tekview in 2011, we could never envisage that 12 years later in the UK, 2G would still be as important in 2023 as it was back then. Globally each country is different in their decisions to close various networks with the US for example who have already shut both 2 and 3G networks in favour of 4/5G.

In the UK we still have a huge amount of telemetry equipment and Smart Meters using the 2G network via really good robust 2G networks with great countrywide coverage from our 3 biggest networks, EE, Vodafone and O2/Virgin.

2G is not spectrum hungry unlike wideband legacy radio technologies such as UMTS using just 200kHz per channel. Machine-to-machine (m2m) communications are increasing 2G connections as 2G modems are cheap, very power efficient and benefit from high coverage levels.

All of the UK big 3 networks have put on record that they have no plans to even consider closing their 2G networks until the end of the decade at the very earlist.

To create more bandwidth for the new 4/5G technologies it is likely that 3G will close first, leaving 2/4/5G available in the UK.

As one of our USPs is ‘no internet connection’ the retaining of the 2G networks in the UK, allows us to offer an alternative IT product in 2022 to IP (POE) at very cost effective pricing due to the maturity of 2G GSM technology.

However for some EU countries and the US, we have 4G versions available and a UK version as and when needed, but again our 4G versions are non IP too and work identically to 2G, via SMS only.

The Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) is a standard developed by the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) With 2G the second-generation digital cellular networks.