It appears Sprint’s legacy 3G CDMA has received another stay of execution, as it has been confirmed T-Mobile has delayed its shutdown by two months.
Originally spotted by a Reddit user, a section of the iPhone global services guide found on the SoftBank website has been updated to state that Sprint’s 3G CDMA network shutdown has been delayed from March 31st 2022 to May 31st 2022.
Due to the circumstance of Sprint, the date has been postponed from March 31, 2022 to May 31, 2022.
Incidentally, there is a possibility that the date of May 31 will be rescheduled in future.
That information has been independently confirmed by us here at The T-Mo Report. An email was sent out to some Sprint customers that still have phones unable to use LTE. In that email T-Mobile confirms the new date of May 31st, 2022 for the Sprint CDMA shutdown. We’ll update this post when we get a copy of that email, but our source is trusted.
According to a separate and unconfirmed source, the final shutdown date is moved to May, but the shutdown begins March 31st. It will then shut down in waves over 2 months, beginning with business customers. Apparently, any lines using CDMA will be disabled, and all calls attempted via such a device will be rerouted to customer care.
The shutdown of legacy cell technology has been all over the place in the last year or so. T-Mobile plans to shutdown Sprint’s 3G CDMA, Sprint’s LTE, and their own 3G UMTS to make way for newer 5G technologies. However, slowly moving partners and outdated customer devices have caused numerous delays.
Originally, Sprint’s 3G CDMA was set to shut down by January 1st of this year. However, that date was moved to March 31st after complaints from “partners”, AKA Dish, that there wasn’t enough time to migrate legacy customers. This latest delay to May 31st has yet to be officially confirmed by T-Mobile, so it’s unclear if Dish is still the main reason for the delays.
In addition to the CDMA shutdown, T-Mobile plans to end their own 3G UMTS network by July 1st of this year. That date has had a number of delays as well, with the original shutdown date being as far back as October 1st, 2021. Sprint’s LTE is also set to be shut down on June 30th of this year.
As of now, T-Mobile’s “Network Evolution” support article does not show the new shutdown date for Sprint’s 3G CDMA network. Hopefully this is the last and final delay for the shutdown of this legacy technology.
Update: Phased Shutdown
We’ve received more information about the 3G CDMA shutdown. According to new internal documents, which appear to have been updated as a result of this article, the Sprint 3G CDMA shutdown is still set to begin on the 31st. The May 31st date is when final shutdown occurrs.
This lines up with the unconfirmed source in the above article, stating that lines will be suspended at some point between March 31st and May 31st, at which point the customer will need to upgrade their device. If no action is taken, the line (and account if applicable) will be closed on June 30th.
