
We think 3G is great, we really do. Be it EV-DO, UMTS, HSDPA, HSUPA, the long-forgotten EV-DV... it's all good in our books. But if there's one thing that we don't like, it's adding yet another band into the mix. Yes, we understand that GSM 900 is already well-established across much of the world, and it only makes sense for Belgium's
Option to be working with networks to develop UMTS 900 hardware for overlays -- but still, someone has to put their foot down and stop the
madness before we're all stuck waiting for phones with six-band radios. (Whew, we feel a little better now.) Anyhoo, it looks like Option has hooked up with Finland's Elisa to successfully place the world's first UMTS 900 call and demonstrate simultaneous voice / data services. The test has also caught the interest of Nokia -- possibly on account of Elisa hanging out in their backyard, which looks at UMTS 900 as a way to fast-track wireless broadband to Finland's rural areas. No word on when the requisite hardware might be in production, but between this and the newly-coined 1700 band, our heads are spinning just a bit.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Edward @ Nov 14th 2006 2:39PM
The proliferation of bands for UMTS occurred when they decided to assign new spectrum for it in Europe. Operators in other countries will not be able to acquire the needed new spectrum and will definitely welcome developments such as this one. Don't be surprised to see UMTS 850 and UMTS 450 in the coming years.
mike @ Nov 14th 2006 7:54PM
thanks for this information
AlanJC @ Nov 20th 2006 12:04PM
To be fair though, it's mainly the USA that does not adopt standards, across the UK, Europe, and in fact, most of the world, we have 900 & 1800 for GSM/GPRS, and 2100 for UMTS.
It's the USA that likes to play with all these different *standards* without actually deciding to use one uniformly across the country, or with the rest of the world.
Who'd have thunk it ;)