Hong Kong just switched off its last 2G network
Hong Kong has closed the book on 2G. China Mobile Hong Kong (CMHK) switched off its second-generation network on June 23, 2026, following approval from the city's telecoms regulator OFCA. The move clears the last GSM signal from what was once Asia's most connected city — and it's a marker that carriers elsewhere, including in the UK, are watching closely.
The last holdout
CMHK wasn't alone in running 2G for this long — it was simply the last one standing. Hutchison Telephone dropped 2G back in September 2021, SmarTone followed in October 2022, and HKT pulled the plug in November 2024. That left CMHK as the sole network still carrying a signal for ageing handsets and specialist industrial devices.
The shutdown also affects China Unicom and China Telecom, which operate in Hong Kong as virtual network operators — they lease capacity from CMHK rather than running their own towers. When CMHK's hardware goes dark, their 2G access disappears too, per OFCA Dec 2025 approval.
3G already gone
CMHK didn't wait long on 3G either. It retired its third-generation network on June 30, 2025 — well ahead of most regional peers. At the time, only around 0.25% of CMHK's customer base was still using 3G, according to DCD coverage. The 2G figure was slightly higher: less than 2.3% of mobile subscribers.
Other Hong Kong carriers — Hutchison, SmarTone, and HKT — still maintain 3G in some form, though coverage has been progressively squeezed. Today, a 3G signal in Hong Kong is mostly limited to remote islands and outer suburbs. Central districts are 4G and 5G only.
Why it matters here
The business case is straightforward: legacy networks consume energy and occupy spectrum that could carry far more traffic on modern standards. Freed-up 900 and 1800 MHz bands are being redirected to 4G and 5G expansion — the same logic regulators are applying in Europe and the UK.
Britain has its own deadline. The UK government has set a 2033 target for retiring legacy mobile infrastructure, though market forces are pushing carriers to move faster than that. The sticking point, as in Hong Kong, is the long tail of users who can't easily switch — elderly customers on basic handsets, and IoT devices like alarm systems and smart meters that were built for 2G and have no straightforward upgrade path.
Hong Kong's experience shows that tail can be managed: when fewer than one in 40 subscribers remain on a legacy network, a clean shutdown is operationally viable. That's a data point UK carriers will find useful as their own sunset dates approach.
