My wife uses her mobile phone mainly for telephone calls and thus has only 2G service/phone. She just received a notice informing her that all 2G service in Thailand will end at the end of this month (February) and that she must get a new phone with at least 3G service. Can anyone help in advising if this is true and that her "old" mobile phone will not work come the end of February. In advance, thanks for any advice that can be provided.

Can anyone help in advising if this is true and that her "old" mobile phone will not work come the end of February.

Your wife uses AIS.

Indeed AIS will not be able to provide 2G services (at least this was my last state of knowledge).

Go the easy way and stay with AIS:

they offer a range of 3G phones for fairly good conditions:

http://www.thaivisa.com/forum/topic/892668-heres-specs-on-the-ais1-2-call-2g-3g4g-free-smartphones/

Got the hard way and change provider (to TRUE) incl. number portability.

I would go the first route.

if you are interested in all the details (maybe not), there is lot of threads in the mobile section.

E.g,. big unfair/fight going on between AIS and TRUE.

http://www.thaivisa.com/forum/topic/892245-ais-scraping-the-bottom-of-the-barrel-now-illegal-too/

There was a state auction of the frequencies which was won with ridiculously high bids, which might now not been guaranteed/credited by the banks.

Lets wait and see

There are several possible scenarios going forward. AIS is in talks with several potential partners trying to maintain 2G service.

Thanks for the info and very quickly. Sounds as if the "dumb" phone would be the simplest answer.

Your words said she uses it only for phone calls and, therefore, she has only 2G. Are you sure that that particular phone only receives on the 2G frequencies? Strictly using it for telephoning, like we do with our phones, does not define it's capabilities.

Before buying, go in and ask an AIS office to check your phone. We received that notice a while back and the AIS office near us said no problem with our phones. I forget what code they punched in, but it pulled up specs that showed both are compatible with ongoing service

They are simple Samsung flip phones, not smart phones. We have tried for at least the last year to buy another one like these and they simply do not make them any more. So that gives you an idea of how old they are. but still 3G capable.

If you disable 3G, you get better battery performance. So some phones are capable, but set to 2G only. I do that to my phones in my home country, unless I actually need 3G/4G.

We checked with AIS and the phone is limited to only 2G so we have replaced it with a "dumb" phone with 3G and for free! Happy with the replacement. Thanks again for all the comments/suggestions.