The OG iPhone is officially a brick in the US now

If you still haven't sold your OG iPhone on eBay, you might as well either polish it and find it a place on your bookshelf or… use it as a paperweight.

A few days ago, T-Mobile officially shut down its 2G network—and that's the one that the original iPhone from 2007 used.

Just as promised

Back at the very start of July, T-Mobile said it would do so and we told you about it at the time.

Unlike AT&T and Verizon, which shut down their 2G networks in 2017 (that's almost 10 years ago now!) and 2020, respectively, T-Mobile kept its 2G GSM service running for several more years to give customers more time to replace older devices. According to T-Mobile Chief Network Officer Ankur Kapoor, the goal was to avoid leaving the few 2G customers without service.

International travelers were another factor. Many visitors to the US still relied on older phones that supported LTE data but not VoLTE for voice calls, prompting T-Mobile to work with overseas carriers to ease the transition. Today, the network serves only a very small number of users, mostly older IoT devices.

Is 2G safe?

While the main reasons behind the 2G shutdown is that it's extremely outdated and inefficient, this standard is also fairly unsafe.

The 2G GSM standard dates back to the early 1990s, and while it was secure for its time, its encryption and authentication methods are now considered weak. That makes 2G networks more vulnerable to attacks such as fake cell towers that can intercept calls or messages. These shortcomings are largely built into the technology itself, so they can't simply be fixed with software updates.

The US is leading

The US moved faster than most of the world because its carriers adopted LTE and VoLTE relatively early and had fewer customers still relying on legacy networks.

Europe has been slower to retire 2G because many more connected devices still rely on 2G. Smart electricity meters, payment terminals, alarm systems, industrial equipment and other IoT devices often use GSM because it's reliable. Many European operators have also been able to keep a small portion of their spectrum dedicated to 2G without significantly affecting their 4G and 5G deployments.

Am I forced to use 5G?

The good news is that you don't actually need to use 5G if you don't want to. Every major US carrier still operates nationwide 4G LTE networks, and virtually all modern smartphones let you disable 5G in their network settings and stick to 4G LTE instead. For everyday tasks like calling, messaging, streaming and browsing, LTE remains more than fast enough for most people.

What you can't do anymore is rely on 2G—or, in most places, 3G. Those networks are disappearing because carriers need the radio spectrum for newer technologies and because maintaining decades-old infrastructure for a tiny number of users no longer makes economic sense.

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