Caribbean na­tion­als or res­i­dents who are plan­ning trips to Unit­ed States dur­ing their Ju­ly Au­gust va­ca­tion may find the roam­ing plans less de­pend­able than usu­al.

This is as a re­sult of the de­ci­sion of ma­jor US Ser­vice providers A-T&T and T-Mo­bile to re­tire 3G net­works, both Bmo­bile and Dig­i­cel cus­tomers will find their in­ter­net slow­er than usu­al when us­ing roam­ing mo­bile da­ta and may even strug­gle to make calls in the Unit­ed States.

Bmo­bile alert­ed their users via text mes­sage on Ju­ly 1 about the pend­ing change by T-Mo­bile, as it had done in June when A-T&T an­nounced their 3g re­tire­ment.

In the mes­sage to their cus­tomers mo­bile said, “If you are trav­el­ling to the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca from Ju­ly 1, 2022, please be ad­vised that your da­ta roam­ing ex­pe­ri­ence may be tem­porar­i­ly im­pact­ed by changes to T-Mo­bile’s net­work. T-Mo­bile and oth­er mo­bile net­work op­er­a­tors in the US have start­ed phas­ing out their 3G net­works to make room for 4G and oth­er more ad­vanced ser­vices.”

The mo­bile provider went on to ex­plain that in the in­ter­im, users may step off the plane, switch off roam, and feel like their in­ter­net con­nec­tion has gone back in time.

“Re­gret­tably, dur­ing this tran­si­tion pe­ri­od (which starts on Ju­ly 1, 2022), you may on­ly have ac­cess to Edge/2G ser­vices. This has min­i­mal im­pact on voice and SMS ser­vices; how­ev­er, you will ex­pe­ri­ence re­duced mo­bile da­ta speeds. If you have ac­cess to safe, re­li­able WiFi net­works, you may con­sid­er us­ing this as an al­ter­na­tive.”

The com­pa­ny con­tin­ued, “We are cur­rent­ly work­ing with these op­er­a­tors to im­ple­ment the re­quired changes so you can ac­cess 4G roam­ing ser­vices in the short­est pos­si­ble time frame. We are in the fi­nal stages of test­ing and very soon you will en­joy an en­hanced da­ta ex­pe­ri­ence.”

Bmo­bile in their mes­sage gave an as­sur­ance that this sit­u­a­tion would be tem­po­rary.

Bmo­bile said, “As your com­mu­ni­ca­tions part­ner, our goal is to pro­vide the best pos­si­ble con­nec­tiv­i­ty ex­pe­ri­ence at home and when you roam. We are work­ing around the clock and mak­ing every ef­fort to en­able 4G roam­ing as quick­ly as pos­si­ble.

We apol­o­gise for any in­con­ve­nience you may ex­pe­ri­ence in the in­ter­im. We thank you for your pa­tience and con­tin­ued sup­port and look for­ward to in­tro­duc­ing you to 4G roam­ing in the very near fu­ture.”

Dig­i­cel al­so put out a no­tice to cus­tomers, and even placed a Ques­tion and An­swer sec­tion on their web­site con­cern­ing the 3G net­work phase-out.

Dig­i­cel said, “Dur­ing this time, as both net­works sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly be­gin shut­ting down their 3G net­works, your abil­i­ty to uti­lize mo­bile ser­vices while roam­ing in the US on the AT&T and T-Mo­bile net­works would be se­vere­ly im­pact­ed.”

The com­pa­ny al­so ex­plained it could al­so im­pact roam­ing voice calls due to the planned change by the US mo­bile net­work providers.

Dig­i­cel said, “As a di­rect re­sult of the 3G de­com­mis­sion­ing on the AT&T and T-Mo­bile net­works, calls via the in­di­vid­ual mo­bile net­work might not be pos­si­ble. AT&T and T-Mo­bile have tak­en steps to strict­ly al­low voice over its LTE net­work. Un­for­tu­nate­ly, this means that most in­ter­na­tion­al net­works that do not uti­lize this tech­nol­o­gy (VoLTE) would not be able to per­form this func­tion on par­tic­u­lar phones. Lim­it­ed 2G cov­er­age will how­ev­er be pro­vid­ed by the T-Mo­bile net­work which will of­fer cus­tomers the abil­i­ty to make mo­bile calls. Da­ta may still be avail­able on both net­works with com­pat­i­ble hand­sets.”

The dif­fi­cul­ty may bring con­fu­sion to users, as both net­works have boast­ed their pro­vi­sion of 4G net­works in Trinidad and To­ba­go, and such some may ex­pect ac­com­mo­da­tion on the US 4G net­work.

How­ev­er, it was ex­plained that while they both pro­vide 4G ser­vice here, their roam­ing plans had re­lied on 3G ser­vices abroad.

“Dig­i­cel has def­i­nite­ly been pro­vid­ing true 4G and 4G-LTE ser­vices here in Trinidad and To­ba­go. The cur­rent sit­u­a­tion with T-Mo­bile and AT&T on­ly af­fects cus­tomers who are roam­ing - mean­ing they are out of Trinidad and To­ba­go and there­fore need to con­nect to a 3rd par­ty net­work in the coun­try where they’ve trav­elled to, in this case, the US,” the com­pa­ny said in re­sponse to a query to the Busi­ness Guardian.

Bmo­bile said, “While Bmo­bile launched its 4G net­work lo­cal­ly in 2016, like oth­er op­er­a­tors of its size, it con­tin­ued to re­ly on 3G for its roam­ing ser­vices. Mo­bile net­work op­er­a­tors in the US are ac­tive­ly shut­ting down their 3G net­works, which Bmo­bile cur­rent­ly us­es, to in­crease ca­pac­i­ty for 4G ex­pan­sions and the roll­out of their 5G net­work and re­lat­ed ser­vices, di­rect­ly im­pact­ing Bmo­bile’s roam­ing ser­vices.”

Dig­i­cel ex­plained it was not sim­ple mi­gra­tion de­spite hav­ing 4G net­works, as an agree­ment be­tween the net­works need­ed to be reached for their ser­vices to be ac­com­mo­dat­ed on the new net­work in­fra­struc­ture.

Dig­i­cel said, “It isn’t as easy as as­sum­ing that once they have 4G and we have 4G it works as one. First­ly the cur­rent agree­ments be­tween providers al­low for 2G and 3G voice con­nec­tiv­i­ty / roam­ing. So when those are no longer avail­able, it would cre­ate con­nec­tiv­i­ty chal­lenges for cus­tomers roam­ing. “

The com­pa­ny con­tin­ued, “LTE da­ta and brows­ing are pos­si­ble once the phone/de­vice con­nects to a net­work- even if it’s ei­ther 2G or 3G. But with AT&T and T-Mo­bile re­tir­ing those net­works, it cre­ates an over­all con­nec­tiv­i­ty chal­lenge. On the oth­er hand, LTE /4G voice re­quires a dif­fer­ent type of in­fra­struc­ture and agree­ment than the 2G and 3G con­nec­tiv­i­ty which can al­low 4G brows­ing.”

Bmo­bile said it had start­ed mak­ing moves to ad­dress the sit­u­a­tion and will soon pro­vide “an en­hanced roam­ing ex­pe­ri­ence be­cause of changes it is mak­ing to its net­work that will al­low the com­pa­ny to lever­age the 4G net­works of its mo­bile roam­ing part­ners in the Unit­ed States.”

The com­pa­ny said, “We have com­plet­ed test­ing and are prepar­ing for the com­mer­cial launch of 4G da­ta roam­ing. With this, Bmo­bile cus­tomers will, in a few weeks, en­joy a faster, more en­hanced da­ta roam­ing ex­pe­ri­ence on AT&T’s net­work.

Our goal is to en­sure that all Bmo­bile cus­tomers have a seam­less con­nec­tiv­i­ty ex­pe­ri­ence both at home and when they roam. We as­sure our cus­tomers that 4G da­ta roam­ing, along with at­trac­tive da­ta roam­ing plans, will be avail­able very soon. Af­ter the launch of 4G da­ta roam­ing, cus­tomers can look for­ward to 4G voice roam­ing.”