An interesting post by Matthew, a guest writer over on Darla's blog today, in which he explains everything you need to know about the differences between Euro and US 3G frequencies, which sort of CDMA you should be looking for in a smartphone, and more. Worth bookmarking at least!
Read on in the full article.
Thanks for the link. I'm more than a guest, I'm going to be around a while. 😊
The article is totally wrong! Here are some "problems" that I found:
"Before I get into the frequencies understand GSM is 2G, GPRS 2.5G, EDGE 2.75G, UMTS 3G, HSDPA 3.5G, WiMAX and LTE are 4G."
What is 4G is not decided yet. LTE is specified by 3GPP, which clearly indicates it is part of 3G standards. Also WiMAX is 3G, as it has been accepted as IMT-2000 standard. IMT-2000 is a set of ITU's 3G specs. However, taking into account huge technical differences between LTE/WiMAX and UMTS, these associations are being disputed (personally, as a telecom specialist, I would rather see LTE/WiMAX as 4G). So the author should not step in fron of the line of more prominent experts declaring what is 4G...
"GPRS and EGDE are both based on GSM, HSDPA and LTE are based on UMTS which are all forms of W-CDMA."
This is simply a nonsense, moreover a double one in one sentence. First, LTE is _not_ based on UMTS. Actually, UMTS is by more similar to GSM/GPRS than LTE to UMTS/HSxPA (the author places everywhere HSDPA forgetting existence of HSUPA). UMTS inherited form GSM/GPRS the core network, whereas LTE introduces both, new radio interface and new core. That puts us to the second nonsense: LTE is _not_ based on WCDMA, nor any other version of CDMA. It is based on OFDMA in the downlink and SC-FDMA in the uplink.
The rest of the text is all right, except that it forgets that in Europe there are two UMTS bands: besides the 2100 it is deployed also in 900 band (sharing it with GSM).
I recommend for this Matthew some reading before writing...