The 2G and 3G network shutdown in Sweden is kind of a fiasco

My Nokia 2660 is being forcibly disconnected next week due to the shutdown of the 2G and 3G mobile networks in Sweden. It does support 4G VoLTE, but there's some kind of technicality about making emergency calls over 4G that the operator claims it falls short of compliance with.

Annoying, but seemed manageable. Except for my own mistake of trying to switch to Telia this should have been easy to handle. Phone's not going to work any more, so replace it. Right?

Except nobody seems to know which phones will or won't work. I've emailed the manufacturer of the phone to ask them which of their other phones are unaffected by the issue. Unhelpfully, they replied that my current phone is actually fine and won't be affected at all.

So I phoned my mobile operator's customer support line and asked them. They confirmed that my 2660 will definitely be disconnected next week. From this conversation I was able to understand that no canonical list of supported and unsupported phone models seems to exist anywhere in Sweden.

Post- och telestyrelsen are the authority behind the mandate to disconnect my phone. Their stance is that it's up to the operators to determine which phones are affected. The operators, in turn, seem to be handling this on a best-effort basis. It's probably a low priority niche compared to the smartphone market.

Meanwhile, retailers continue to sell handsets whose useful lifespan can be counted in days depending on which mobile network you're subscribed to. None of them have even added a notice to the product description. I have the impression that none of them have noticed this is happening. Or the lack of information about which phones are affected has made it impossible for them to act in advance.

Of the phone manufacturers I've emailed so far, nobody has owned up to their phone being affected by the issue. Every reply I've received absolutely stank to high heaven of unmoderated LLM output too. Who knows if I ever reached any humans at all via that route.

The very helpful human I did speak to on my operator's customer support line was able to dig out some internal documentation identifying a few phones similar to my current one that are probably not being disconnected next week. This was very satisfying informtion to receive.

I immediately emailed the manufacturer of the phone to ask them about the operator's list of potentially supported phones. I got another very ChatGPT-looking reply telling me none of those phones are supported, and that "their team is working on it". What the fuck?

For now I've given up and put my SIM back inside my old iPhone. I'm going to wait until after the unsupported phones are locked out before I even think about buying a replacement. Since nobody seems to agree with anybody else about which phones will work, I need to be able to use ångerrätten to return any replacement promptly if it doesn't work.

The structural barriers to living without a smartphone in Sweden have proved pretty overwhelming so far. Parking zones without physical parking meters. Restaurants that only accept money via Swish, or where the only way to order is via a QR code. Delivery companies that can't deliver unless you have their app.

It has been a struggle, but this has been the closest I've come to feeling like giving up on it.