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Pour one out for AT&T Edge (or praise its death, your call)

Pour one out for AT&T Edge (or praise its death, your call)

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AT&T has confirmed the plans it made four years ago to shut down its 2G EDGE network by 2017. Its demise set off a raging debate in our Circuit Breaker chat room, along the following lines:

  • 2G was essential to the smartphone revolution! Everything that came before the iPhone (and heck, even the original iPhone) was possible because people saw the potential of real data on phones thanks to 2G! (Paul Miller)
  • 2G was a garbage network that couldn't hold a candle to 3G CDMA in the US that was available at the same time. (Dan Seifert)
  • Yeah but GPRS was worse and moving from a Treo 270 to a Treo 600 was a revelation that proved out that people really would use mobile data. (Dieter Bohn)
  • Dieter. Shut up about about Treos. Then remember the PPC 6700. Case, rested. (Dan Seifert)
  • What about all the sweet European gadgets you could import and run on AT&T though? (Dieter Bohn)
  • Does anybody want to talk about 2.5G? (Paul Miller)
  • NO PAUL GOSH (Everybody)
  • Listen, this news is literally four years old guys. You have to have a new angle. Like the fact that Chumbys hacked to use 2G won't work anymore. (TC Sottek)
  • Am I really going to have to translate this ridiculous debate into an angle that's going to play on Facebook? Really guys? (Dami Lee)
  • I'm just going to transcribe this chat and post it, everybody, liberally changing your views and opinions in a desperate attempt to increase the humor value of this post. (Dieter Bohn)

So get ready to say goodbye to AT&T EDGE, and to the very few Internet of Things devices still using it. The spectrum will be repurposed for LTE, which is better.

Read Next: When gadgets were king, by Walt Mossberg.