KPN shutting 3G by January 2022

The Netherlands’ KPN has decided to shut down 3G mobile voice/data network services by January 2022, it announced on its website. Its statement highlighted that the introduction of nationwide 4G LTE services gave customers much faster and higher quality mobile internet, and the number of 3G users is decreasing. The operator added that in order to be able to offer more capacity and higher speeds in the future, it has already refarmed some former 3G 2100MHz bandwidth for LTE, whilst ‘over 95%’ of KPN customers now have a smartphone that is capable of supporting 4G, a percentage it expects to increase even further in the coming years. It added that from January 2022 onwards, users without a VoLTE-compatible phone will have voice calls routed via the KPN 2G network.