Most of the excitement at Mobile World Congress this month will be about 5G, which won’t officially exist until 2020. But vendors will also show off new ways to speed up the 3G and 4G networks most people use today.

That means more than 4G, because while LTE gets a lot of press, older services are more common than you might think. Just over half of the world’s mobile subscriptions (51 percent) are for 2G service only, according to Tolaga Research analyst Phil Marshall. Almost one-third are limited to 3G, while only 15 percent are 4G. Even in 2020, only 48 percent of subscriptions will be for 4G.

Some users are stuck on a slower network because they haven’t upgraded to a faster phone, and some of those 2G-only subscriptions are for connected machines that don’t need any more speed. But there are a lot of mobile users who could use a performance bump even before 5G comes along.

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