Better call your grandparents’ flip phones now because they may soon stop ringing.
“The requested relief is necessary to avoid the harmful, even deadly, impact this sunset would have on tens of millions of people in millions of homes, businesses, and government installations due to a loss of central station alarm protection service,” the AICC wrote in its petition to the FCC. “Lives will very likely be lost if connectivity is lost.”
“We were confronted with the pandemic, which took many, many months from us, where seniors and individuals would not allow people in their homes or really weren't focused on an issue like this,” says Daniel Oppenheim, an AICC spokesperson. “Just as these challenges sort of abated to some degree, we now haveAcknowledging pandemic-induced hardships, most telecom companies have already delayed their 3G sunsets by months to years.
“It’s sort of like the whole transition when we went from physical film to digital,” Townsend says. “It’s gonna be painful for some. I think for older folks that aren’t necessarily into the latest and greatest, they might be affected. But I think because the incentives are so compelling from the AT&Ts and the Verizons and whatnot to move people onto the newest technology, from my perspective, it's not going to be a huge factor.