So there is an impact to service... but you've just decided it doesn't matter. Gotcha.
No, not at all. Why do you have to be so confrontational about it? We're just having a discussion about potential impacts!
As a user of these services, I was just speculating as to the effect potentially offered by the continuation of 2g, thats all. (My earlier posts, which are entirely correct, relate to the fact that the February 2022 date is not a UK thing and until further notice, full functionality will continue as advertised. I acknowledge that one day our time will come).
I have one of the affected cars and a BMW Connected Drive subscription. I have the following online services:
BMW RTTI <-- this is the really important one, the reason for which I maintain the subscription. As I said above, this service is also offered on CIC fitted cars which are 2g only. So, clearly it can be provisioned over 2g so potentially can continue.
BMW Online <-- This comes included in the package. I rarely use it, but it does display weather on the map. Again, this also works over 2g, but not very well. But it's of limited value anyway.
BMW Remote Services <-- I had these on my CIC fitted car too and they worked over 2g.
This is different to the situation in the USA because they no longer have 2g to fall back on.
The other options you mention are data intensive and won't function on a slow connection, but these cars don't really do them, so it's of limited impact. I'd love if it I could stream Spotify over my cars data connection but I cannot.
And we're assuming 3G cars will fail back to 2G, gotcha.
We are assuming this, yes. Given that the car sometimes displays a 3g logo and sometimes does not when using BMW online, I have made the assumption that it can use both (Otherwise what is it doing when it isn't displaying the 3g icon).
So, my opinion is that the bottom line is:
a) There is nothing to worry about yet. No date for discontinuation of BMW Connected Drive exists for iDrive 4 cars in the UK
b) When the day does arrive that 3g gets turned off, there is every chance that the most useful services will continue to function, albeit perhaps not quite as quickly as they do now.