Telstra and Optus push back shut off of 3g networks 03:35

Now on Drive... Little Charlie Brown. ..the fight against scams never stops. To defend you, Australian banks have joined forces with a major investment in new technology. Australian banks are working to protect you. Well, who would have thought that Telstra and Optus would have to extend the closure of their 3G network?

Well, to give us all the details, Charlie Brown, host of 2GB's Life and Technology, joins us. Charlie, g'day. Hey, Chris. End of October now. It's going to be that they switch off, they being Telstra and Optus. It was meant to be August, end of August, and that was extended from end of June for Telstra and end of September was always the date for Optus.

The thing is that these cellular networks, they can actually see what devices are connected to them. They can see whether they're 5G, 4G. They can see how calls are being made on what part of the network, how often, what kinds of devices. And clearly, they can still see that 3G devices are connecting to the network. So people still haven't

left the network with new devices or updating software or whatever it is they need to do like they have been requested to do by the network providers. So they're extending till the end of October.

Do you think that'll be the final extension? I think so. Usually, okay, I've got a bit of a theory why they're doing it. I think it's the concern that too many devices using 3G are still connected, but also the concern that, just say, Chris, somebody is trying to ring triple O.

and they're not able to, and it comes back once investigations have been done that they were on, their device was trying to call and was only calling across the 3G network, for example, and something happened to somebody. We don't want that, right? We don't want that. So I think that what the networks are doing is saying, look, we're very close. We're going to give people just a little bit more time to make sure, one, the network is not needed at all anymore,

And two, everyone has a happy cellular network transition to 4G and 5G and goes off from there. Did this public safety awareness, do you think it's enough? The problem is... Or do you think people are still going to slip through the cracks regardless of whether it's extended or not? Of course. We're talking about millions of devices. So if you go over a fraction of a percent...

of devices connected to the network and there's a fraction of a percent of devices that will still only call on 3G networks after they shut down. Of course, there could be some left over. I think, I've got to say, the networks have done a pretty good job. They've

tried SMSing people they've tried interrupting phone calls that they've dialed like if you dial out on a phone that is 3G only they will now interrupt the call before connecting it saying hey this is a 3G only phone you need to move to a 4G they're trying everything but there's still going to be some that are left over what's on the show tomorrow

We're going to talk about the next generation of home electronic cleaning products plus the rollout of the artificial intelligence PC. What is coming now? We'll talk to the guys from HP about what's going on. You're a good man, Charlie. We'll be listening. That's Charlie Brown with Life and Technology tomorrow morning at 8am right here on 2GB.