Disqus
There used to be a time when you had to know what bands your operator was using in order to make sure that the mobile phone you were purchasing would connect to the network. These days almost every smartphone, and many feature phones, have quadband GSM/EDGE so you’ll be able to get call, texts, and 2G data working, regardless of where you are on the planet. With 3G things got a little bit more complicated, mainly due to North America. While Europe and Asia use the 2100 MHz band, and more recently they’ve also started rolling out 3G on the 900 MHz band, over in FreedomLand you’ve got AT&T using the 850/1900 MHz bands and T-Mobile using the 1700/2100 MHz bands. Luckily most of the new high end smartphones come in multiple variants to appese everyone, and Nokia’s engineers even figured how to make pentaband 3G smartphones so their devices will support every 3G signal currently being broadcast. So what’s the situation with LTE going to be like? Not good according to the analysts at Informa Telecoms & Media.
According to them America is going to rely on the 700/2100 MHz band for LTE, Europe is going to go with 800/2600 MHz, Asia is so complicated that you need to view it on a per country basis, which is a problem since they’re likely going to be the world’s largest wireless market, Africa is going 2100/2600 MHz, and finally the Middle East, who will go with 900/1800 MHz. You’ve also got to take into consideration that EU operators have been given permission to use whatever spectrum they currently own to roll out LTE, so you’re going to see a lot of networks that were once used exclusively for 2G networks be ramped down while a high speed LTE network is built alongside it using the same bands.
Should you be worried? At this point it’s way too early. LTE smartphones don’t exist in Europe and Asia yet, and in America the models that are out can best be described as Frankenstein abominations because they feature two radio chipsets, one that does CDMA, the other that does LTE, causing ridiculously disgusting battery life.
We’ll revisit this sometime in late 2012.
About The Author
Stefan Constantinescu
Stefan Constantinescu (@WhatTheBit on Twitter) has loved technology since as far back as he can remember. It started with computers, but in the past few years his passion has turned to mobile devices. As a mobile phone enthusiast who lives and breathes devices that connect to the internet, he knows he is not alone with this radical fascination of all things wireless. He is strongly opinionated and enjoys a good debate so leave comments in his posts and he’ll get back to you! Stefan began blogging as a hobby in the fall of 2006 and joined IntoMobile in the summer of 2007. Later he got a job at Nokia in March 2008, but as of June 2009 he has rejoined the IntoMobile team. He is currently based out of Helsinki, Finland.
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http://profiles.google.com/alexandre.cmsilva Alexandre Silva
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http://www.intomobile.com/ Stefan Constantinescu
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http://www.facebook.com/people/Quintus-Murray/1469036783 Quintus Murray
