Since this community is open to an international audience and since many people online (whether they live in USA or not) are woefully misinformed about the state of GSM/2G services in this country, this post is being made to set the record straight.

For a long time, since at least 2001 (and even earlier if we include these companies’ predecessors) and through the end of 2016, there were two nationwide GSM/2G networks available in most of the country: Cingular Wireless (rebranded to AT&T in 2007) and T-Mobile USA, former VoiceStream. Then on 2017 January 1 AT&T shut down their GSM network (the one that used to be Cingular), leaving T-Mobile as the only available GSM network in most locations.

Current state of T-Mobile 2G

TMO have been waging a war against 2G since at least 2018 - in that year I (Mother Mychaela, author of this post) encountered for the first time a specific location in my area (a neighborhood in San Diego) in which T-Mobile turned off their 2G signal (leaving only 3G and 4G) and refused to turn it back on when I called to complain. Then in 2019 I discovered for the first time that T-Mobile started issuing maliciously modified SIM cards: their newly issued SIM cards have GSM 11.11 SIM application removed (DF_GSM directory missing in the SIM file system), causing their SIMs to not work in phones that don’t speak the newer USIM-ME interface protocol that was introduced for 3G.

In the present time (as I make this post on 2026 June 4) T-Mobile GSM/2G network is still up in certain locations. I live in Ramona, CA, a small town in San Diego County, and both in our little town and in San Diego proper I experience the same situation: some spots have perfectly strong signal while other spots are dead zones. However, the quality of service on this network is very severely degraded:

• Clear voice quality is attainable only if you intentionally seek out a spot with the very strongest signal level, which may require some driving. Everywhere else outside of these select strong spots, your phone will typically show some bars of signal and will have good enough service to send and receive SMS - but when you try to talk with voice, it will be very choppy, making conversation very difficult.
• Talking while driving or riding in a moving vehicle is impossible - the call will drop. Instead you have to pull over in order to talk on the phone, and be completely stationary.
• Even in idle mode (outside of a call), as soon as you start moving, your phone will very likely drop to no service and will only reacquire service after some delay when you become stationary again, assuming that the destination you drove to has service.

In technical terms, there are two factors contributing to this abysmal quality of service:

• TMO operate their unloved GSM service in the guard bands around their 15 MHz wide LTE signal in PCS1900 band. In itself this arrangement would be perfectly fine - one can operate a high-quality GSM service in guard bands around LTE. However, the problem with how TMO do it is that they emit their guard band GSM signals at much lower power level than the LTE “curtain” they surround. The result is that GSM phones receive signal with a very poor C/I (carrier to interference) ratio, which leads to choppy voice connection.
• Every GSM cell continuously emits so-called system information messages on BCCH (broadcast control channel); among other important info, these SI messages provide a list of neighboring cells. Phones use these broadcast neighbor cell lists in order to reselect from cell to cell in idle mode: when your phone is in idle mode outside of a call, it is camped on a particular cell (called the serving cell), but it has to constantly monitor signal strength of neighbor cells in order to detect movement and thus know when to reselect to a different cell, and to which. The problem with today’s state of T-Mobile 2G is that they broadcast completely bogus neighbor cell ARFCNs in their SI messages, causing phones to look in the wrong place when movement occurs. Furthermore, those bogus neighbor cell ARFCNs they broadcast aren’t empty, instead they correspond to spots in PCS1900 band that are now occupied by wideband LTE signals - confusing GSM phones that expect valid GSM signals on those ARFCNs where the serving cell told them to look for neighbor cells.

Artificial blocking of new users and phone switchers

One of the most sinister hostile actions done by today’s TMO against 2G users is artificial blocking. The following anti-human behaviors have been observed so far:

• While SIM cards issued by TMO themselves are maliciously modified to remove GSM 11.11 SIM application, some TMO-based MVNOs still provide SIM cards that have GSM 11.11 support. However, at that point a network-level block kicks in: TMO’s core network sees a non-VoLTE phone connecting, they check the account and see that it is new (not “grandfathered”), and they boot that phone off the network. The block appears to be based on IMEI: VoLTE-capable phones configured to operate in 2G mode don’t get disconnected, certain old phone IMEIs that didn’t make the blocklist get by, and those users who are able to change their IMEI have also reported success.
• Some GSM phone enthusiasts are not content with using just one particular old phone, instead they have a large collection and like to move their legacy (“grandfathered”) T-Mobile SIM between phones. Recent reports indicate that TMO started blocking such users as well!

Foreign SIM roaming workaround

Quite interestingly, when someone roams on T-Mobile’s unloved 2G network with a foreign-issued SIM, no artificial blocking of any kind gets applied! The most popular source of foreign SIMs for this trick is Mexican Telcel: there are some private sellers on Amazon who sell pre-activated Telcel SIM cards with already-assigned phone numbers, such that the prospective American user does not have to physically travel to Mexico, and there are English-language websites that allow top-up payments on these Mexican Telcel prepaid lines, eliminating the Spanish requirement.

There are some downsides with this method:

• You will have a Mexican number (country code 52), not USA. Convincing other people to call you at a Mexican number may be difficult, as they may be subject to international call charges.
• You will probably receive a steady flood of marketing SMS in Spanish, and it may be difficult to tell what is junk which you can simply delete vs potentially important communication from Telcel regarding your service.
• Telcel SIMs are made in the same triple-cut form factor as all other “modern” SIMs, thus mechanically weak in 2FF-only usage and thinner than the original 1FF/2FF/3FF standard, potentially resulting in less reliable contact.

Despite these limitations, however, this method is the most practical option available today for those who don’t have a legacy T-Mobile account going back decades, or those who desire a SIM card which they can freely and safely move between different phones.

Small regional carriers

AT&T (former Cingular) and T-Mobile were the only two nationwide GSM operators in USA; with AT&T out of the picture since 2017, T-Mobile is the last one. However, there may be some small regional carriers in some corners of the country who still operate GSM/2G independently from TMO - finding these small carriers, if they exist, remains an active area of research.

American 2G Cooperative

A2GC is the non-profit company that created this Lemmy community. Our cooperative was founded as a response to the problems described earlier in this post, the very bleak state of GSM/2G services in USA today. Our cooperative seeks to do the following:

• Operate our own physical GSM/2G services in some very small select locations in USA. By small we mean just a handful of cell sites, an extremely tiny footprint - and our service locations will have to be very far away from civilization, in very remote rural areas with minimal population, as those areas are the only ones where we can get access to GSM spectrum bands.
• Operate a roaming-capable core network, and then use FCC rules section 20.12(d) to compel T-Mobile into letting us roam on them. The resulting effect we seek to achieve would be equivalent to roaming on TMO with a Mexican Telcel SIM (which works today), but with A2GC instead of Telcel as the home operator. The advantages will be USA phone numbers, SIM cards specifically made for retro mobile phones (2FF cut, traditional thickness) and 2G-centric customer service.

The above description is just a quick summary; a separate post will be made later to describe the mission and work of A2GC in greater detail.