Did AT&T freak you out with an email about your phone? Don't worry ... yet.
AT&T just sent out an email to some customers that scared the crap out of them. But what they were actually trying to convey is not as bad as it seems.
My family's cellphone plan includes my father, who uses an archaic iPhone 3GS. (It's from 2009.) So, on Tuesday, when the the telecommunications company emailed him and other users with older phones announcing, "UPDATE NEEDED," in huge font, it was clearly because of my dad's elderly handset.
The email explained, "we will soon be upgrading our network," before sharing the bad news: "Your device ... is not compatible with the new network and you need to replace it to continue receiving service."
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Super vague and threatening.
Since there was nothing in the email saying when this would be happening, people like my mother, the account holder, assumed the upgrade would need to happen right away. She immediately freaked out about transferring my change-adverse dad to a newer iPhone.
If you click through the alarming email, however, you'll quickly see that this is all because of AT&T's 5G network upgrades, which are slated for 2022. The current 3G network will be phased out — but not until February of that year. After that point, voice calls won't work on phones using 3G and 4G networks, like my dad's phone.
If you click yet another link on that webpage you'll find a list of all compatible phones, which includes Apple smartphones, but only those after the iPhone 6.
We reached out to AT&T to hear more about its notification strategy and whether it intentionally wanted to freak out customers. In a statement the company apologized for any confusion about timing.
"This email was one of many planned to keep customers informed about the shutdown of our 3G network in early 2022. It should have included the date that certain devices would no longer be supported. We apologize for any confusion this may have caused and will be more clear in future updates," the statement read.
My dad's old phone isn't going to cut it much longer. But he's got well over a year to fix that.
UPDATE: July 22, 2020, 4:28 p.m. UTC Updated to include a statement with an apology from AT&T.
Sasha is a news writer at Mashable's San Francisco office. She's an SF native who went to UC Davis and later received her master's from the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. She's been reporting out of her hometown over the years at Bay City News (news wire), SFGate (the San Francisco Chronicle website), and even made it out of California to write for the Chicago Tribune. She's been described as a bookworm and a gym rat.
