The 2G switch-off: will the transmitters at your remote sites go quiet?
The day 2G is switched off, a transmitter that knows no other network won’t necessarily warn anyone that it has gone quiet. The next alarm, though, will not get through. After nine departments in south-west France and the city of Nice, Orange switches off its 2G network in 44 departments on 6 October and in the remaining 43 on 20 October. SFR and Bouygues Telecom follow from 15 November.
At an industrial or power generation site, the equipment affected is rarely what anyone looks at every day: the alarm transmitter at a remote substation, the modem at a pumping station, a meter read remotely, the unit that alerts the on-call team when a genset stops. They were installed to last, they work, and their SIM card now shows up only as a line on a bill. At a remote site, nobody walks past them. Nobody thinks about them until something fails. This failure will make no noise.
The timetable is counted in weeks. The breakdown by department and by operator is published by the French site DegroupTest1, and the main dates are listed further down. They sometimes move: check them again on the website of Arcep2, the French telecoms regulator, before you plan anything.
At the end of June 2026, there were still 0.62 million 2G-only connected devices in mainland France, according to Arcep figures reported by DegroupTest3. That is half as many as a year earlier. What is left is likely to be what nobody looks at any more.
Four steps, before and after the switch-off.
Start from the bills. The M2M lines you hold with your operator give you the list of active SIM cards, often more reliable than the team’s memory.
Identify the modem in each piece of equipment. Its data sheet or its modem part number says whether it runs on 2G only, on 3G/2G or on a more recent network. Failing that, the installer or the manufacturer will know. If nobody can answer, treat the equipment as at risk. Equipment that runs on 3G/2G will hold out until the end of 3G, and no longer.
Rank by consequence. A safety alarm transmitter comes before a monthly remote meter reading. The unit that alerts the on-call team when a genset stops comes before the meter, which a technician can still read by hand.
Test after the switch-off. The day the switch-off reaches your department, trigger a test on each priority piece of equipment. Write down the result: the next test may not be run by the same person.
That leaves the remote site where the network meant to take over from 2G has poor coverage, or none at all. Our team can help you set up a connection there, over a satellite link or a LoRaWAN-type radio network.
One last question.
My site is in a mobile not-spot (zone blanche): am I affected on 20 October?
Not necessarily on that date. At Orange, the switch-off in some regulatory not-spots (zones blanches réglementaires) will take place between 1 and 15 December 2026. That leaves little time, and the inventory needs to start now.
Sources.
-
DegroupTest, on the 2G switch-off timetable at Orange, SFR and Bouygues Telecom, 21 August 2026.
-
Arcep, 5th observatory on the switch-off of 2G and 3G mobile networks, 24 September 2026.
-
DegroupTest, on the latest Arcep figures and the equipment still to migrate, 25 September 2026.
