AT&T's plan to shut down its 3G network has been repeatedly blocked. The security industry says it will cause public safety risks.

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AT&T's plan to shut down its 3G network next year will create "significant public safety risks" and "place a significant strain on law enforcement resources," a maker of electronic surveillance equipment said, according to Light Reading.

That's because law enforcement agencies across the country use surveillance equipment to track criminals outside of prison, and some of that equipment still uses 3G networks from AT&T and Verizon to provide connectivity. Verizon plans to shut down its 3G network by the end of 2022 (a date set after multiple delays), but AT&T hopes to shut down its 3G network on February 22, 2022.

"AT&T's announced 3G network shutdown date of February 2022 is a very urgent issue for the electronic monitoring industry, as the manufacturing, testing and replacement of 4G modules and terminal equipment has been largely suspended over the past 18 months due to the COVID-19 pandemic," Alcohol Monitoring Systems said in a statement submitted to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). The company is reported to produce electronic monitoring equipment for the criminal justice system and warned that some of the 250,000 criminals using such equipment will be affected by AT&T's plan to shut down the 3G network.

“In recent weeks and months, the industry’s redoubled efforts to make up for lost time continue to be hampered by dwindling inventories and a slow restart of global supply chains,” Alcohol Monitoring Systems said. “These forces are too great for any one company, let alone the industry as a whole, to offset.”

The company urged the FCC to require AT&T to delay shutting down its 3G services.

Alcohol Monitoring Systems joined the Alarm Industry Communications Committee, which said earlier this year that AT&T's plan to shut down its 3G network would affect millions of alarms installed in homes and businesses across the United States.

AT&T responds

AT&T recently responded to the security industry's concerns by saying it couldn't delay shutting down its 3G network because doing so would affect its efforts to improve its 5G network, as FierceWireless noted.

AT&T told the FCC: "AT&T is working around the clock to deliver and realize the full promise of 5G for customers across the country. To succeed, AT&T will need to make the most efficient use of its limited spectrum assets. We must quickly convert all 850 MHz spectrum (which has long range and good penetration) from 3G to 5G use to improve network performance and prevent service disruptions across the United States. Therefore, AT&T must terminate its 3G network based on 850 MHz spectrum in February 2022."

AT&T explained that due to the specifications of the UMTS standard used by its 3G, it currently has to allocate all 10MHz of its low-band 850MHz spectrum resources to its 3G network, even though its 3G users only use 4% of the resulting network capacity. The company said it needs to reallocate this 10MHz of low-band spectrum to its mid-band 5G network, which is being built using C-band licenses purchased earlier this year. Specifically, AT&T said it needs to add the low-band 850MHz spectrum, which can cover a wide geographic area, to the uplink portion of its mid-band 5G network to prevent dropped calls and other issues at the edge of the C-band coverage area.

"In short, AT&T cannot repurpose critical 850MHz spectrum for 5G until it shuts down its 3G network," AT&T told the FCC.

It's unclear how the FCC will handle the issue. However, AT&T isn't the only company facing pressure for shutting down its 3G network. The California Public Utilities Commission recently warned T-Mobile that it will investigate the company's plans to shut down its 3G CDMA network early next year.