basic pay as you go phone?

savergrant

Have you tried your ee sim in the new phone? There are two reasons why you might have received that message, either your phone is limited to 3g or your sim is. If it is the phone then putting your sim in a 4g compatible phone will give you a 4g signal, if it is the sim (if you have had it a long time) ee will need to send you a replacement sim. To be honest this is more likely if your sim was originally orange or t-mobile (i think mine was one2one) as ee sims have probably always been 4g compatible. But as pointed out you will still be able to make calls or send texts.
To be fair to ee staff most of their customers equate phones with data, not calls or texts these days, so losing mobile data means losing service.

If your ee sim doesn't give you 4g in your new phone follow the instructions here to get your sim replaced;
https://ee.co.uk/help/mobile/getting-started/sim/what-is-a-sim-swap

Kim_13

According to the page on the EE site linked in a previous post, they completed their 3G switch off in January and February of this year, so anyone receiving any such messages from them should not worry. No one is going to lose their phone number or any of the functionality they have, since the change has already happened. 

Any 3G capable handset will happily make calls and texts until 2G is switched off. Only those who used the smart functionality of the smart phone will be impacted and only then when away from WiFi. Perhaps MMS messages will no longer work, as I think they needed 3G or higher, but the majority probably email or WhatsApp photos since that is free.