Hello all. Sorry for the late update, holiday season plus I wanted to give it some time. I've had extensive troubleshooting contact with IT at Ice as I kept losing my network repeatedly, for over 5 minutes. They could confirm that my phone had lost connection with the network (a reminder to everyone that we can always be tracked via our simcards 🙃) and that they had sent a "2G is not available" message to my phone. Below is a summary of what they said:
**- 2G services were phased out end of May 2025.
There’s a technical concern that the mobile device might still be trying to connect to 2G, even though Ice no longer supports that network.
Their national roaming agreement with Telenor provides access to 4G and 5G, but not 2G.
The Pixel phone may recognize Telenor’s 2G network and attempt to connect to it.
Telenor has postponed the shutdown of 2G services until 2027; however, Ice customers won't have access to Telenor's 2G network.
The situation can only be solved by a software solution, either on the mobile device or within Ice's network. They are addressing this issue on both these fronts, collaborating with Google and the teams responsible for the mobile network.**
Phones are programmed to do almost anything to reconnect with networks, including connecting to 2G if 4G or 5G is not available. Disabling 2G did not help as long as I was on 5G. Then they suggested that I switch to 4G preferred, but I have switched to "4G only" and turned on "2G protection" (meaning 2G is disabled) and so far i have not experienced a network drop.
For those of you experiencing the network drops, try this and let me know? The side effect has been that people who call me get a horrible echo of their own voice if I dont speak for a minute. But so far, it is what it is..