I never recovered from the 3g network being shut down.

I had a great setup with a 3g modem & a 3g phone. sms messages from friends would come to my laptop when I was sitting at my desk, and when I was away would be forwarded to my phone. I had all sorts of commands I could execute on my server from my phone via sms. Home automation, media player, etc.

I replaced the 3g modem with a 4g model from the same company and... no one would give me cheap sms-only service. Everyone considered it a "hot spot router", so 10x the monthly fee for service. No way. (The REALLY frustrating thing there was that the 4g modem was much nicer from my perspective. Talking to the 3g modem took a few hundred lines of C. Talking to the new one was a 20 line shell script.)

Also, 4g coverage apparently sucks here. I have to walk out to the front of the building to MAYBE get a signal.

I've given up and switched to xmpp over wifi, which works great in some ways, but doesn't replace everything I had working with the 3g setup.