[lxgr]

I wonder why some countries are shutting down 3G but are keeping 2G around for several more years (UK, Germany), while others do the opposite, and yet others can get away with turning off both and going 4G/5G only (like the US).

Maybe it's a function of what type of M2M devices were rolled out most commonly in a country? For example, parking meters and vending machines often communciate via SMS in Germany; that works on 2G, so they might not even have a 3G modem.

On the other hand, I've seen a mobile payment terminal with a built-in 3G modem (but no LTE) that basically became obsolete with the 3G shutdown, since it falls back to GPRS which is hopelessly overloaded and/or just too slow for applications not geared towards it.