Just because I can.
But it also proves 2G is still at least somewhat usable.
I would just switch my phone to 2G only and then continue the download in Termux using wget because that’s most reliable way to download files.
I let it run overnight, then stop it when I needed my phone during the day, then let it run again at night when not needed anymore.
However, 2G is quite inefficient, so this actually drains the battery a lot.
I wonder if the carrier just sees a weird spike in 2G data usage.
Anyway, calculation time. Wikipedia Kiwix ZIM file is approximately 110GB. 109,886,078,976B to be precise. With average speed of say 21KB/s, it would take around 2 months to download the whole English Wikipedia with low res pictures over 2G EDGE.
But also EDGE is quite better than original GSM Data (CSD), which offered breathtaking 9600bps.
I think you’re mixing it up with Kb/s. Bits vs bytes. 21KB/s is 168Kb/s, which is faster than the fastest dial-up.
I know the difference, but I guess I just misremembered if it’s literally impossible. When I downloaded stuff it did tend to hang around 30-40 though, so if that is Kb/s instead, I guess my amazing speeds were actually a little over 4KB/s. I definitely for sure had dial-up though, we were on the AOL plan for quite a long time.
Also about:
At least in some countries around Europe, 3G was shutdown rather than 2G. It used up more bandwidth, and most devices can still fallback to 2G, plus at least in Slovakia 2G had superior coverage. Well, still has over 4G/5G.
Plus there’s a lot of 2G-only IoT devices like electric and gas meters, and those companies are less likely to upgrade than individual customers.
So far, only Orange plans to shutdown 2G, sometime around 2028. I’ve also seen an idea to keep one single 2G network that would be shared between all 4 carriers, which is an idea I quite like.
Remember, it’s also a fallback for modern devices when VoLTE/VoWiFi/VoNR doesn’t work.