by Webbing Team | September 24, 2025
All around the world, mobile operators are shutting down 2G and 3G networks. According to GSMA Intelligence, 131 networks are scheduled to shut down by 2030, 61 of them by the end of this year.
There are several key reasons behind this phase-out. Mobile operators retire legacy networks to reuse valuable low-band radio frequencies for more efficient modern technologies. The 900, 1800, and 2100 MHz bands often used for 2G and 3G networks can be refarmed to enhance telecom operators’ 4G and 5G capacity along with new spectrum such as 3.5 GHz. New technologies offer better cost-efficiency, lower energy consumption, improved functionality, and a superior user experience.
In addition, maintaining outdated infrastructure means ongoing investments in aging equipment that yields diminishing returns. While the device ecosystem is gradually shifting toward LTE and 5G options, continued support for the small tail of 2G/3G devices becomes financially impractical. Finally, operators also aim to simplify operations: running multiple generations of network technologies increases operational complexity. By reducing the number of active network layers, MNOs can streamline processes like device testing and provisioning.
The sunset requires changes by operators, but enterprises must prepare as well. For enterprises that deployed cellular-connected IoT devices over the last 15 years, the 2G and 3G phase-out can pose major risks – or at least underscore the need to future-proof connectivity.
What types of devices are affected
The number of devices that use cellular connectivity and are compatible only with 2G and 3G technologies is still significant. For example, in France, by the end of June 2025, there were 2.7 million SIM cards in terminals for voice/SMS/mobile internet services and 3.2 million SIMs in terminals for M2M services. Some device categories rely heavily on 2G and 3G – so much so that the French Elevator Federation publicly requested a delay to the shutdown of legacy networks, noting that nearly half of elevators in the country still use 2G or 3G technology.
Almost any type of deployment can be affected. Any fleet of devices that rely solely on 2G and 3G-only radios is most exposed. Aside from elevators, it can be legacy vehicle or asset trackers, vehicle SOS services, home security systems and alarm panels, smart meters, industrial telemetry gateways, vending machines and kiosks, POS terminals, agricultural and environmental sensors, and even older health monitoring and medical telemetry units.
It’s also important to consider devices that use cellular connectivity as a failover when a wired internet connection goes down.
How the 2G and 3G sunset can impact IoT deployments
Service Disruption
Many existing IoT devices, especially the ones deployed 10–15 years ago, were built with 2G or 3G modules due to their lower cost and wide availability at the time. As mobile network operators decommission their older networks, these devices lose connectivity entirely, disrupting vehicle telematics, smart metering, industrial monitoring, asset tracking and other sensitive processes.
For various IoT devices, technical reasons for these failures may vary. Some products rely on basic text messages to wake up or control a device, assuming 2G is everywhere. After the shutdown, those same actions have to use newer 4G/LPWA methods, which may not be supported or configured the same way, so wakeups and commands can simply fail.
Devices that roam across countries and between operators may not get consistent roaming, so a tracker that works fine at home might fail to connect or drain its battery in another.
Voice functionality that is vital for safety- and security-critical IoT applications will also need to transition to either Voice over LTE (VoLTE) or Voice over IP (VoIP) as 2G and 3G networks phase out.
Finally, many deployments have modules and antennas tuned to a few legacy bands or radio categories that don’t align with current band plans or antenna requirements. This difference results in unpredictable cell handover once 2G/3G is gone.
Regulatory and Compliance Risks
In regulated industries, like utilities or healthcare, non-functioning connectivity may result in non-compliance with reporting and safety requirements. This creates legal and financial risks, because legislation oftentimes explicitly requires devices to stay connected. For instance, in the EU and UK, elevators must have a remote alarm system that can reliably transmit an emergency call, which means it requires an operable communications link at all times. Another good example is eCall – all new car types in the EU must support 112-based eCall so the vehicle can automatically contact emergency services after a severe crash; regulators are now moving to ensure those systems migrate off 2G/3G to remain functional as networks sunset.
Operational and Maintenance Costs
With 2G and 3G shutting down, companies must replace or retrofit their fleets for 4G/5G connectivity. Aside from new connectivity modules, that also means bearing the cost of sending technicians to remote sites (truck rolls). Technicians are to swap radio modules, SIMs, sometimes even replace antennas to match new bands, and load new firmware. Doing this for hundreds or thousands of devices at different sites significantly drives up operational costs.
But costs may not be the biggest problem here. Each such technician’s visit creates a time window when a certain device is offline while being maintained, rebooting, reconnecting, or retrying after a failure. Where contracts include strict SLAs, e.g., ≥99.5% availability or alarms within 60 seconds, those windows can push performance below targets and end up with penalties and churn.
What enterprises need to know before migrating off 2G and 3G
Depending on the timelines and scope of withdrawal of 2G and 3G services in specific areas and the type of connectivity solutions used by an enterprise, the migration strategy may vary. However, most organizations can benefit from using eSIM.
Based on the eUICC technology, eSIM removes most of the risks and costs around provisioning during and after the sunset by turning carrier changes into remote software actions instead of repeated on-site visits. After the one-time radio upgrades, profiles can be downloaded, localized by country, and switched over the air, avoiding truck rolls for SIM replacements or configuration updates. Moreover, the same eSIM-equipped hardware can serve multiple markets, which streamlines supply chains throughout the migration.
With the new GSMA Remote SIM Provisioning standard, SGP.32, it became practical even for IoT devices that don’t have user interfaces. Now each device can pull down the necessary mobile profile on its own when it wakes with no technician needed, and if a change doesn’t work it safely rolls back and tries again, so fleets don’t end up offline. The standard also lets operations teams run profile changes in controlled waves, watch success status per device, and apply simple rules such as “prefer Operator A or fall back to Operator B if coverage is poor” without any changes to hardware. That prevents common migration headaches like endless reconnect loops or dead batteries from constant retries and makes it feasible to move thousands of endpoints off 2G/3G onto the best available 4G/5G option.
Using eSIM makes IoT deployments future-proof. By using eSIMs in installations of smart meters and other IoT devices, both stationary and moving, enterprises can ensure that their deployments are protected from costly upgrades when standards, provider’s network settings, or simply data plans have changed.
Webbing’s Connectivity Solution
Our eSIM solution, WebbingCTRL, ensures failover connectivity with the capability of using multiple mobile carrier profiles, easily changing carriers at any time with zero integration, and an option to fall back from a failing profile to a different profile without any need to communicate with a remote server. Webbing’s eSIM is aligned with the GSMA SGP.32 IoT eSIM standard.
WebbingCTRL enables organizations to remotely add, remove, and swap operators for any number of IoT deployments immediately without operator integration or collaboration. It also provides a centralized way to manage eSIMs/SIMs lifecycle and profile inventory, as well as visibility into device data usage. Companies can set up business rules that would allow devices to change the serving operator automatically under specific conditions, such as location, country, loss of connectivity or even after a certain amount of time. WebbingCTRL platform can work with both SGP.32 and SGP.22 standards, and also supports M2M devices for relevant use cases. It provides a single pane of glass to manage all devices deployed regardless of standards used.
More than 1 million WebbingCTRL eSIMs/SIMs have already been deployed globally since its release in April 2022.
Webbing’s connectivity solutions guarantee global coverage, and through our ecosystem of over 600 mobile operators worldwide, devices can roam seamlessly across multiple carriers’ networks in every region. It solves the problem of weak spots that any mobile network may have and ensures full coverage and continuous connectivity for all devices, even at remote locations.
Webbing’s distributed core network with local breakouts, multiple network solution, and data server redundancy provides connectivity stability and low latency. It also allows to easily comply with local regulators’ requirements and helps to adapt to any changes in legislation. Besides, it gives enterprises the ability to quickly scale their deployments or adjust their existing fleet management to any business scenario.
Contact us today to learn how Webbing can support your organization’s connectivity strategy with a customized solution.
