Folks using Sprint’s legacy 3G CDMA network may have just won a slight reprieve, with a new report revealing that T-Mobile has pushed back the date of its shutdown by another two months. T-Mobile, which merged with Sprint in 2020, had planned to decommission the aging 3G network on March 31, 2022. However, The T-Mo Report has discovered that the carrier has quietly extended the deadline to May 31, 2022, instead.
The change initially came to light via a post on Reddit, where someone noticed the new date on the website of Softbank, which previously owned Sprint. Although T-Mobile hasn’t made a public announcement, The T-Mo Report confirmed that several Sprint customers with older phones received an email directly from the carrier. Those with phones that can’t use LTE were told that they now have until May 31, 2022, before the Sprint CDMA network shuts down. However, even this date may not be final. A footnote on the Softbank page adds that “there is a possibility that the date of May 31 will be rescheduled in [the] future.”
Sunsetting legacy 3G services
T-Mobile initially wanted to shut down the Sprint 3G network on January 1, 2022, but delayed it to March 31, when its partner, Dish, raised concerns that it didn’t have enough time to migrate its legacy customers over to the Boost Mobile network. When Sprint merged with T-Mobile in 2020, it was required to divest itself of its prepaid services, Boost Mobile and Virgin Mobile, which were sold off to Dish to ensure the industry remained competitive. Regulators hoped that Dish could rise from the ashes of Sprint to take over the vacated fourth-place spot on the top carriers list.
