Verizon stops supporting iPhone 5S and older

4G VoLTE network is getting increasing support from consumers, owing to faster speeds and consistent network coverage. In India, Reliance’s Jio brought the 4G VoLTE technology at affordable price rates, thus enabling consumers to move to a faster network from the older 3G infrastructure. However, the US market had adopted the LTE network long before India did and one of their carriers is taking a drastic step by stopping all activations for their 3G WCDMA network.

Verizon, one of US’ prominent telecom service provider, has stopped accepting activation requests for its 3G network, thus requiring newer customers to opt for 4G LTE network. Therefore, all devices that do not support 4G LTE won’t be allowed activation on the Verizon network.

"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,” stated Verizon in a statement to CNET.

For all those using smartphones that only support 3G, it is advised to upgrade to devices that support 4G VoLTE services. In Apple’s portfolio, devices before the iPhone 6 will be rendered useless as they don’t support 4G LTE. The iPhone 5 and iPhone 5S support 4G networks, but don’t have native support for VoLTE. Similarly, all other devices that don’t support VoLTE will be rendered useless for now.

In India, 4G VoLTE exclusive network such as Jio doesn’t allow to make calls from the iPhone 5S, unless the user installs the Jio 4G Voice and SMS app.

(source)