That's hilarious. No major facilities-based mobile network provider in the US has used physical 2G hardware for many years.

Everything was converted to software-defined remote radio heads long ago. The RRHs get mounted up in the air directly behind the antenna element arrays. The same RRHs that power LTE RANs can do GSM just fine.

GSM is computationally and spectrally an afterthought. They literally shove it into the guard bands at the far edges of the PCS LTE carrier.