Does this mean that EU and US phones still won't be compatible?
Today, 2:23 PM by Eric M. Zeman
Finland has chosen to auction off spectrum in the 1800MHz band for future Long Term Evolution networks. Other European countries are looking at 2600MHz spectrum for their own LTE deployments. Finland's Ministry of Transport and Communications believes that using 1800MHz will be a better option, as it offers better penetration, wider coverage and lower cost to deploy compared to the 2600MHz spectrum. In the U.S., network operators such as AT&T and Verizon will use 700MHz to deploy LTE networks.
As it stands right now for the CDMA world you will still be stuck with having to have a different device if you travel overseas.
If you are on a GSM network then you will just have to live with the slower speeds of the GSM network in that country.
Granted all this depends on how those other countries deal with their existing GSM networks. If there is enough frequency to go around they may drop it all together and have only LTE as there network and reallocate the other bands to something else. But this is very unlikely IMO.
As far as LTE is concerned, perhaps those parts of the world utilizing GSM on the various frequencies will come around to LTE, as it has been suggested. However, that would be a very expensive proposition to persue on their part, in light of the world-wide economic decline. I would vote for some kind of a meeting of the minds no sooner than five to ten years from now, and IF LTE is superior to GSM, which impressed the heck out of me when ...
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As for LTE, from the article I posted, it does appear that Europe will adopt LTE, but it will utilize different frequencies for it than will the U.S.
Take the grid on that page, imagine a dozen others similar to it but allocated completely differently.
THIS is the world of available 4G spectrum. Every country (almost) has its own Spectrum policy and distribution. Adding new technology and encoding schemes can only make universal handsets LESS feasible until cognitive radio becomes a practical reality.
Don't bet on that happening any time soon.
If every country had come together initially to discuss radio spectrum usage - and I'm talking almost 100 years ago now - then we wouldn't be complaining about how AMPS/TDMA/CDMA/GSM/LTE and more exist on different frequencies in different countries. One country's microwave telephone relay system could be another country's emerge...
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