In an announcement made by one of the United States largest carriers, Verizon has stated that effective immediately the carrier will no longer activate phones that do not operate on the 4G network with VoLTE capabilities. In short this means that they won’t be activating iPhones older than the iPhone 6.
Verizon claims that even though their 3G CDMA network will remain available through the end of 2019, the carrier is making efforts to transition away from its older 3G CDMA network and focus more on 4G LTE and the its future 5G technology. Verizon’s complete statement can be seen below.
While technically the iPhone 5 was the first to support 4G LTE, none of the devices were able to support Voice over LTE (VoLTE) until the iPhone 6 was debuted.
“For several years we’ve been publicly saying that our 3G CDMA network will remain available through the end of 2019. Virtually all traffic on our network is on our 4G LTE network.
“To facilitate a smooth transition to 4G LTE capable products and services, we are no longer allowing devices that are not 4G LTE capable with VoLTE to be activated on our network.”
As previously stated, this won’t affect anyone with newer iPhones, but could hamper plans if you were looking to pick up an older iPhone on a budget.