These scams on text usually have these links which the unknowing find hard to resist to click, which then enables scammers to gain access to their personal details.
Notable also is the notorious IMSI catcher which hijacks and impersonates cellsites on 2G networks. These illegal pieces of equipment allows malicious actors to mimic senders (pretending to be legitimate messages to unsuspecting recipients) and send false SMS broadcasts within the range of the hijacked site.
Which brings this issue to the fore: Should 2G be shut down? Is this the right time to shut it down?
In other countries, many mobile companies have already switched off their 2G networks, mainly due to efficiency concerns. Besides being already obsolete, mobile companies have opted to utilize their valuable resources from 2G frequencies to LTE and 5G.
In the US, AT&T shut down its 2G network as early as 2017, followed by Verizon and then Sprint. Only T-Mobile has 2G today, but per its statements, the shut down that should have happened this April was just postponed. Singapore, South Africa, Taiwan and Australia have no more 2G elements in their respective mobile companies.
In the case of the Philippines, only Globe and Smart still have 2G, while Dito Telecommunity, the latest entrant, runs only on LTE and 5G (not by choice though, as all the 2G spectra have already been allocated to the incumbents Globe and Smart).
Surely it will take a determined effort and conviction from the mobile industry – with the full support of the regulators – to come to terms with the 2G shutdown.
In the case of Globe, about 91% of its subscribers of 58.8 million are already on smartphones, and the remaining 9% still on featurephones, or the brick-and-mortar analog voice and SMS phones. For Globe alone, that means disenfranchising around 5.29 million customers, and we can assume that the same numbers are the same with Smart.
This estimated number of more than 10 million who are still on feature phones are a large number to bear with, comprised mainly of the D and E market and the elderly. So in the mind of most regulators and taking into account the number of people still on 2G, shutting down 2G is a bad political move.
Also, replacing these feature phones with smartphones at the expense of the telcos is not an option, given that the cheapest smartphone in the market still runs between P3,000 to P4,000 each. Besides, there is no guaranty that the replacement phone will end up with the intended user.
Meanwhile in the fight against scammers, Globe disabled in its system the sending of SMS with links except those from verified subscription accounts like from banks and financial apps. Globe also strongly advise the use of sending one-time password (OTP) codes through the social media messaging network.
The mobile industry and the government are heavily into educational campaigns for the public not to disclose their passwords, OTPs and other personal details. The mobile companies have also strong coordination with the police authorities for the identification and eventual arrest of the scammers.
For now, 2G flickers alive in the country, but there is still hope of seeing a 2G sunset in the coming years.
But thanks to social media apps like Facebook, YouTube and Tiktok, the number of customers still on 2G are diminishing as they are embracing the idea of owning a smartphone to join these apps.
And yes, even if we do not want to, 2G will be run over by obsolescence, with no more available feature phones on the market, and no more technical support for the same.
With the fast pace of technologies and the people’s appetite to be connected to friends and family via the social apps, this will come sooner than we think.
Atty. Castelo is the Group General Counsel of the Globe Group and the president of the Philippine Chamber of Telecommunications Operators.
