The Sprint shutdown is fully underway. | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

The remnants of Sprintโ€™s network have been put out to pasture. As of yesterday, Sprintโ€™s LTE network has been retired by its new owner, T-Mobile. Thatโ€™s along with Sprintโ€™s 3G CDMA network, which was shut down earlier this year, and what remained of T-Mobileโ€™s own 3G network, which enters retirement today. T-Mobile spokesperson Justin Paulsen confirmed to The Verge that the network shutdowns are now underway.

It may come as a surprise that any part of Sprintโ€™s network was still operational so recently. In April 2020, T-Mobile officially took ownership of the company, including all of its spectrum and network towers, which would ultimately be repurposed for 5G. Sprintโ€™s 3G CDMA network was the first to go when T-Mobile started to shut down Sprintโ€™s systems in March. It had originally planned to sunset the network at the end of 2021, but after a heated debate over anti-competitive behavior during which Dish chairman Charlie Ergen called T-Mobile a Grinch, the date was pushed back.

Sprintโ€™s LTE network followed later and was set to be officially retired as of yesterday, June 30th, 2022. Unlike the companyโ€™s 3G network, which our former executive editor Dieter Bohn paid appropriate tribute to in his Sprint eulogy, thereโ€™s not much of a reason to mourn its loss. Sprint was late to LTE after betting first on WiMAX, and as a consequence, its LTE network lagged far behind the competition by the time it was up and running. It was flat-out bad, actually.

If you are somehow still using a phone running on Sprint LTE or T-Mobileโ€™s 3G, thereโ€™s a very high chance that youโ€™ve already encountered problems with your service. In any case, T-Mobile will be more than happy to get a 5G phone in your hands. Paulsen says, โ€œCustomers who needed to take action as a result of these retirement efforts were notified well ahead of time and received an offer for a free 5G replacement device.โ€

If the deprecation of legacy wireless networks brings a tear to your eye, take heart: T-Mobileโ€™s 2G GSM network is still, somehow, operational. The company plans to retire it but doesnโ€™t have a set date yet.

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