Looking back at the shadows that 2G brought to us in those years

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Image source: Visual China

There is no doubt that 5G is becoming more and more popular today. Various topics about it are constantly flying around, and hype and facts are constantly emerging.

If we want to experience what it means to "see only the newcomers laughing, but not the old ones crying" at this moment, the best way is to look at the predecessor of 5G, the 2G that almost all of us have been with day and night...

Do you think this word is very distant? When you think back carefully, words like QQ show and surfing the Internet come to mind? Do you have a feeling that this article will start to reminisce about youth and explore the ancient history of mobile communications?

What’s interesting is that the 2G network, a technology and service that seems to have been buried in the corner of history, is actually not a thing of the past today.

It is in your phone right now and is basically useless. It may even cause you some trouble, but it seems not so easy to make it disappear completely.

It can be said that today every mobile phone user, operator and mobile phone manufacturer, even those who are eagerly waiting for the 5G era, are still living under the shadow of 2G.

Let us explain the "2G chicken ribs" problem of "tasteless to eat, a pity to throw away".

Dangerous 2G network

It is safe to say that, except for the initiators, there is no Chinese who does not hate telecommunications fraud.

But logically speaking, now that phone calls are all real-name registered, wouldn't it be enough to just identify one and call it off?

However, in fact, all the fraudulent text messages we receive come from some strange numbers. Many people have even received fraudulent text messages from operator customer service, bank customer service, and airline numbers, which makes people hard to guard against. Most of these text messages come from the same technology: fake base stations.

According to statistics, China generates more than 4 million fake base station text messages every day. It can be said that fake base stations are the absolute main force in telecommunications fraud networks. The reason why fake base stations are rampant despite repeated bans is largely due to the 2G network, which is a hotbed.

In the 2G network, GSM only has one-way authentication encryption, and the mobile phone itself cannot confirm the legitimacy of the network. This natural technical loophole makes mobile phones on the 2G network unable to resist attacks from fake base stations, and the 2G era has become the most unsafe era in the history of mobile Internet.

Now that everyone is using 4G, does the insecurity of 2G networks no longer matter?

Unfortunately, it did not. Since the 2G network itself has not disappeared, criminals can use network interference to induce users' phones to fall back to the 2G network environment, and then trigger the established 2G fake base stations that the phone cannot recognize. Qingzhe can use this to send some "account theft" fraudulent text messages to users. What's more, they can steal money directly from users' phones.

In the past two years, many legal media have reported on a case in which criminals hijacked the 2G network to commit text message sniffing crimes.

According to current reports, this criminal method uses a fake base station device with a relatively strong signal and a network jammer to hijack the signal in the community. Generally, it is chosen in the second half of the night when everyone is asleep, and the user's 3G and 4G network is cut off through frequency band interference, forcing the phone to fall back to the 2G environment. Then the user's SMS control is obtained through the 2G fake base station, and then Alipay, JD.com and other apps are opened to transfer money in the hijacked environment.

When users woke up, they found dozens or even hundreds of verification messages on their phones, but a lot of real money was missing from their accounts. The feasibility of this criminal method is still under debate. But one thing is certain: for most users today, 2G is completely useless. The only thing it brings to real life is telecom fraud and spam messages.

Due to the inherent insecurity of 2G networks, various cases of telephone fraud, privacy theft, and mobile Internet attacks are caused by the basic operation of pulling users into the 2G network first. As a result, the 2G network seems to have become a dangerous water area, which connects to where we swim daily, but only people with bad intentions are peeping in the deep water.

Of course, the above crimes can be solved by various means on the terminal side and by signal band testing. Today, mobile networks are becoming more and more secure. However, directly cutting off the 2G network and pulling all terminal devices into a more secure network environment is obviously the most straightforward way.

On the other hand, cutting off the 2G network not only has security significance, but also hides the operators' concerns that "if the heavens don't die, the yellow sky will not stand."

The unbearable “weight of 2G”

In April this year, China Unicom disclosed that it was gradually carrying out a 2G base station frequency reduction and service replacement campaign, and it was expected to shut down 101 base stations. Many media believed that this would be the beginning of Unicom's complete closure of 2G network services, and the "2G demolition" campaign of China Mobile and China Telecom was not far away.

In addition to the current security issues of the 2G network, the concern about profitability is the main reason why operators really want to take action on 2G.

According to relevant data, among China's mobile network users today, 2G users account for less than 2%, and the percentage is decreasing. However, this network, which is not used by many people, occupies a large number of base station resources and continues to consume operation and maintenance costs. This certainly cannot make operators who must respond to the country's call for "speeding up and reducing fees" happy.

What makes the 2G network truly useless is not only the operation and maintenance, but also the fact that 2G occupies almost the most important resource of the future communications industry: spectrum.

To this day, how the spectrum of 5G will be divided is still in suspense. But there is no doubt that as the network becomes more and more complex and the spectrum becomes less and less, it becomes extremely important to cultivate this communication resource. In August 2016, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology issued the "National Radio Management Plan (2016-2020)", proposing to formulate market-oriented strategies and plans for spectrum resources that are suitable for my country's national conditions and market environment and reflect the characteristics of different types of applications. For the first time, market-oriented competition methods such as auctions were introduced into China's communications industry, which basically means that spectrum in the future mobile communications industry will become more precious and tradable.

So for operators, on the one hand, operating four sets of networks at the same time is a waste of too much resources. On the other hand, the launch of 5G means the opening of new markets, and operators urgently need to mobilize resources to cultivate them.

And what is the 2G network doing? It is occupying the recognized high-quality spectrums such as 900MHz and 1800MHz, which can be said to be occupying something but not being able to do anything.

As a result, we can see that today the three major operators are all proposing to re-cultivate spectrum resources, especially 2G spectrum. As a result, the 2G network withdrawal movement is gaining momentum.

When the nostalgic term 2G can only bring insecurity to consumers and heavy burdens to operators, it seems that it is time to say goodbye.

But the slightly embarrassing thing is that it doesn’t seem that easy.

Although it tastes bland, it's a pity to abandon 2G

Today, Japan, South Korea, the United States, Singapore, and other mobile communication powers we are familiar with have completely shut down their 2G networks. Chinese operators have indeed started this action, but many people are still not optimistic that we can completely say goodbye to 2G.

According to data released by the three major operators, in 2017, there were nearly 300 million 2G users in China. Don't be surprised. Because most of them are not human users. I believe everyone knows that the only mobile phones that can only connect to 2G networks today are so-called elderly phones. And more 2G terminals are IoT devices such as water meters, electricity meters, street lighting equipment, shared bicycles, children's watches, etc. And here is where the problem arises. Although we talk about the Internet of Everything every day, the development of the NB-IoT network on which IoT devices depend is actually quite lagging, and is in repeated discussions and disputes, so a large number of IoT devices have chosen the lowest-cost 2G network as the signal baseband. Of course, today mainstream children's watches and other devices have begun to choose 4G networks, but a large number of public service facilities still rely on 2G.

If the Internet is cut off, what will happen to these devices and the newly developed industrial chain? This situation is probably because you didn't choose the right internal skills, so you practiced the moves first. As a result, you learned the Nine Yin White Bone Claw, but when you went back, you found that it was the internal skills of Shaolin Temple, which seemed a bit inappropriate.

Another problem with the 2G network is that China's communication infrastructure has always been built slowly but dismantled slowly, which is of course due to various non-technical factors. For example, the analog TV network originally used by county-level TV stations is still in operation today, but it is probably impossible for anyone in remote areas to use this ancient technology. Even the spectrum of the PHS is still in operation.

Faced with these older but not extinct technologies, the 2G network is very stable.

In addition, it should be noted that the market for elderly phones, which accounts for about 2%, has actually spawned an industry chain that is deeply controlled by operators, and the profits are not low. This is also a reason why the 2G network is still on the verge of being shut down.

There is no doubt that the shadow of 2G looming in 2018 is a bit complicated. Whether it will be a quick and decisive solution or a gentle renewal is a strategic choice of the operators, and we have no way of knowing.

But it can be seen that the dismantling of 2G is a project that will be carried out sooner or later. Some of the impacts it brings are worth thinking about today.

Progress and impact of the “2G demolition project”

Demolition is always a matter of one thing affecting the entire system, whether it is demolishing a house or a network. The subsequent industrial impact may be a challenge and an opportunity.

For example, the IoT issue I just mentioned, the number of IoT devices based on 2G has reached hundreds of millions today, and the number is still increasing. The 2G network will eventually be retired, which will likely have an impact on the IoT, especially the reshuffle and large-scale upgrade of the IoT industry in urban infrastructure.

Today's IoT industry is probably in a state of random punches beating the old master. Everyone uses what they have without considering long-term development. This situation will eventually end. The opportunity for dedicated networks and industry standardization may be hidden in the withdrawal of 2G networks.

Another area that needs to be reshuffled is the elderly phone market. Many elderly people choose phones with only 2G functions not because they are cheap, but because they really don't know how to use touch-screen phones. So is there a solution to enhance the elderly's mobile phone experience and achieve the goal of 2G network withdrawal at the same time? This may also be a new growth point for the mobile phone industry.

In fact, there is another task of 2G bearer, which is to provide network in remote areas where base station construction is insufficient. Then this may be another topic. How to ensure smooth network in every inch of the country? Or will 2G network be gradually withdrawn from big cities and eventually become a "frontier technology"?

A highly popular technology is often easy to become obsolete, but it is not so easy to completely disappear. Today we are still facing the confusion of 2G, and we can even find some opportunities in its irreversible departure. So what about the departure of other technologies? Are they all the same or are they quietly gone?

The graveyard of technology may be a topic worth thinking about frequently.