San Diego survived the strike against VoiceStream GSM

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retromobilephones·Retro Mobile Phonesbymnfalconia_a2gc

San Diego survived the strike against VoiceStream GSM

District 13 is alive and well, and so am I! We survived an attack by the Capitol, and we remain fully operational.

More seriously: this morning, 2026 August 3, the gang of criminals who exercise corporate control over T-Mobile USA and along with it, over the great legacy GSM network that was once called VoiceStream, executed a devastating strike against this network. Over the course of several hours this morning, beginning around 6 AM EDT and ending just before 7 AM PDT, those miscreants shut down GSM/2G services over most of the country. Confirmed losses along the Pacific coast of USA (the only part of the country that I am familiar with) include Washington state and much closer to me, Southern Los Angeles - as well many other losses in other parts of the country that I know nothing about.

However, in my home county of San Diego, California, VoiceStream (or T-Mobile if you like) GSM/2G service is still up as I make this post! This morning I was watching YouTube livestreams by some members of Discord+Reddit vintage mobile phone community, and I saw it in real time as the gentleman in WA state and the other gentleman in South LA lost their service. As they ended their livestreams upon loss of all GSM signals in their respective areas, I kept watching the signal at my home in the town of Ramona, and saw that it was still up just fine. I then got dressed, got into my car and hit the road: I set out to visit every spot in my home county where in the recent months I've been getting good TMO 2G signal, and check as many of those spots as I can.

I am pleased to report that I have now driven over almost all of my usual roaming range, and in every spot where I have had good signal over the past several months, it is still there! I am making this post from the Panera Bread location in Mira Mesa, next to the Regal Edwards cinema, and I get super-strong signal here. I get similarly good signals in select spots in Oceanside, Escondido and best of all, my home town of Ramona!

Since it has now been almost 8 hours since 6 AM in my time zone, and since all known shutdowns happened within close proximity to the stated 6 AM local time, I shall go out on a limb and hope that San Diego may be one of those lucky few locations that have been spared in this round. I have heard reports that T-Mobile 3G is still up in some very small select spots in the country, even though it was officially shut down nationwide in 2022 - hence I hope that 2G in San Diego may be in the same status.

But of course now is not the time to become complacent - the evildoers will never be satisfied until all of us are either dead or living pointless, meaningless lives without our beloved technology - and we must not give them that satisfaction! I am continuing my work to improve Osmocom GSM network software, which will be used for the "above-ground" network of American 2G Cooperative, and can also be used for personal defiance solutions like the one in this post.

I realize that for many people playing with old cellular technologies (phones or network components) may be just a hobby - but for me it is a lot more. I have given decades of my life to GSM, and it is one of several causes for which I would be quite happy to actually die - and I fully mean it. So to everyone who seeks to take away GSM/2G service from me and anyone else like me - it is just like how Suzanne Collins said it through her character Katniss Everdeen: If we burn, you burn with us!

View original on retrolemmy.com

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4 replies

mnfalconia_a2gc

retrolemmy.com

Update: not only is T-Mobile GSM still up in my town (Ramona, San Diego County, California) as I add this comment, but I just connected to it from one of my FCDEV3B modem boards and exercised some CSD calls! I called NIST ACTS at 9600 baud, exercising both transparent and non-transparent modes of CSD. Here is the log from the non-transparent call - I am showing this one because transparent mode unavoidably incurs some garbage characters, while NT mode is clean:

at+cbst=7,0,1
OK
atd13034944774
BUSY
atd13034944774
BUSY
atd13034944774
CONNECT

National Institute of Standards and Technology
Telephone Time Service, Generator 3a
Enter the question mark character for HELP
                        D  L
 MJD  YR MO DA HH MM SS ST S UT1 msADV         <OTM>

61256 26-08-04 02:50:25 50 0 +.0 045.0 UTC(NIST) *
61256 26-08-04 02:50:26 50 0 +.0 045.0 UTC(NIST) *
61256 26-08-04 02:50:27 50 0 +.0 045.0 UTC(NIST) *
61256 26-08-04 02:50:28 50 0 +.0 045.0 UTC(NIST) *
61256 26-08-04 02:50:29 50 0 +.0 045.0 UTC(NIST) *
61256 26-08-04 02:50:30 50 0 +.0 045.0 UTC(NIST) *
61256 26-08-04 02:50:31 50 0 +.0 045.0 UTC(NIST) *
61256 26-08-04 02:50:32 50 0 +.0 045.0 UTC(NIST) *
61256 26-08-04 02:50:33 50 0 +.0 045.0 UTC(NIST) *
61256 26-08-04 02:50:34 50 0 +.0 045.0 UTC(NIST) *
61256 26-08-04 02:50:35 50 0 +.0 045.0 UTC(NIST) *
61256 26-08-04 02:50:36 50 0 +.0 045.0 UTC(NIST) *
61256 26-08-04 02:50:37 50 0 +.0 045.0 UTC(NIST) *
61256 26-08-04 02:50:38 50 0 +.0 045.0 UTC(NIST) *
61256 26-08-04 02:50:39 50 0 +.0 045.0 UTC(NIST) *
61256 26-08-04 02:50:40 50 0 +.0 045.0 UTC(NIST) *
61256 26-08-04 02:50:41 50 0 +.0 045.0 UTC(NIST) *
61256 26-08-04 02:50:42 50 0 +.0 045.0 UTC(NIST) *
61256 26-08-04 02:50:43 50 0 +.0 045.0 UTC(NIST) *
61256 26-08-04 02:50:44 50 0 +.0 045.0 UTC(NIST) *
61256 26-08-04 02:50:45 50 0 +.0 045.0 UTC(NIST) *
61256 26-08-04 02:50:46 50 0 +.0 045.0 UTC(NIST) *
61256 26-08-04 02:50:47 50 0 +.0 045.0 UTC(NIST) *
61256 26-08-04 02:50:48 50 0 +.0 045.0 UTC(NIST) *
61256 26-08-04 02:50:49 50 0 +.0 045.0 UTC(NIST) *
61256 26-08-04 02:50:50 50 0 +.0 045.0 UTC(NIST) *
61256 26-08-04 02:50:51 50 0 +.0 045.0 UTC(NIST) *
61256 26-08-04 02:50:52 50 0 +.0 045.0 UTC(NIST) *
61256 26-08-04 02:50:53 50 0 +.0 045.0 UTC(NIST) *
61256 26-08-04 02:50:54 50 0 +.0 045.0 UTC(NIST) *
61256 26-08-04 02:50:55 50 0 +.0 045.0 UTC(NIST) *
61256 26-08-04 02:50:56 50 0 +.0 045.0 UTC(NIST) *
61256 26-08-04 02:50:57 50 0 +.0 045.0 UTC(NIST) *
61256 26-08-04 02:50:58 50 0 +.0 045.0 UTC(NIST) *
61256 26-08-04 02:50:59 50 0 +.0 045.0 UTC(NIST) *
61256 26-08-04 02:51:00 50 0 +.0 045.0 UTC(NIST) *
61256 26-08-04 02:51:01 50 0 +.0 045.0 UTC(NIST) *
61256 26-08-04 02:51:02 50 0 +.0 045.0 UTC(NIST) *
61256 26-08-04 02:51:03 50 0 +.0 045.0 UTC(NIST) *
61256 26-08-04 02:51:04 50 0 +.0 045.0 UTC(NIST) *
NO CARRIER

The AT+CBST=7,0,1 command sets 9600 baud NT mode, then I called the number for NIST ACTS. I got BUSY the first two times because funding cuts to legacy technologies have reduced NIST ACTS to just one modem line, but on the third attempt I connected.

In my view, this CSD capability is one of the coolest features of VoiceStream GSM network, and I am very happy to report that it still works. I naturally hope that it stays working as long as possible, but if they do kill it, I am committed to replicating this feature in Themyscira Wireless MSC software and thus in the future network of A2GC.

mnfalconia_a2gc reply

retrolemmy.com

Since T-Mobile GSM network got shut down the next day after I made those test CSD calls, and since it appears that no one in the more dominant Vintage Mobile Phones community (Reddit and Discord) exercised the function of CSD to analog modem emulation, it is likely that those two successful CSD calls I made yesterday (one transparent and one NT) were the very last CSD calls ever made in USA-occupied Incalia.

It is now our duty as the Retro Mobile Phones community to recreate this CSD functionality in Osmocom-based GSM networks, and it is my firm goal to make our implementation no worse than the one which TMO just killed - see chapter 5 of Hera MSC architecture specification.

mnfalconia_a2gc

retrolemmy.com

I saw a comment on VMP Discord suggesting that those locations where T-Mobile 2G service is still up are "glitches", failures to shut down, and that they may be gone in another few days or weeks. Since it appears that I am the only active community member in San Diego, anyone who sees this post will likely wonder if the service is still up or not. In order to keep the greater community fully informed, I will add another comment here if and when this service disappears.

If you don't see any comments under this post that indicate otherwise, please know that T-Mobile 2G service is still up at least in the town of Ramona where I live.

mnfalconia_a2gc reply

retrolemmy.com

Unfortunately T-Mobile GSM service in my home town of Ramona, California got shut down today, 2026 August 4. I don't know the exact hour when it happened: it was still up when I went to bed shortly after PDT midnight, but when I got up this morning and looked at my spectrum analyzer, GSM signals in the guard bands of 1950.000 to 1950.750 and 1964.250 to 1965.000 MHz were gone. Then I got dressed, got into my car and drove around town with my little handheld SA - no GSM signals anywhere in town, from any of the towers.

So far the loss of T-Mobile GSM is confirmed only in Ramona and not the rest of San Diego County. However, since Ramona is nothing special, most likely all of SD County is gone now. In the next couple of days I am expecting a package to arrive at my Oceanside PMB, and I will need to drive there to pick it up - I will check for presence or absence of GSM signals in Escondido and Oceanside then.