A Visual Guide to AWS

One of my original strategies with this article was to rely on graphics to explain some of the more complex issues, but your feedback helped me realize that the major points need to be explained in detail in the text as well, so you know what to look for in the charts, etc.

I hope I've done a decent job of that with the other key points, but you pointed out an area where the text was relatively weak in guiding readers through the graphics.

Therefore I've just added the following text to clarify the exact question you asked:

No current phones (as of October 2006) are capable of operating in the AWS band.

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The chart above also shows why current UMTS 2100 phones aren't compatible with the AWS band. UMTS 2100 phones transmit to towers in 1920-1980 MHz range, which is what towers using the PCS band use to transmit to phones in North America. Therefore UMTS 2100 phones are already designed to not transmit in that range when they're in the US, since that would interfere with PCS networks. Even if that weren't an issue, an AWS network can only "listen" to the 1710-1755 MHz range, so it could never "hear" the 1920-1980 MHz transmissions of a UMTS 2100 phone.