ok.. i was looking at mobileburn.com at they are showing the first comercially available UMTS phone for cingular. they claim the phone has the american/canadian UMTS frequency, but NOT the european. according to what they say, american/canadian UMTS frequencies are 850/1900 mhz. is this correct? why would they use the same frequencies as regular GSM, as opposed to europe who is using a completely different spectrum, 2100mhz? wouldn't this cause some sort of interferance?
Shoresguy would be the one to answer your question, but AFAIK Europe reserved the 2100 band, and actually auctioned it off a few years ago, for exclusive UMTS use, meaning that the 2100 band was only to be used for DATA. I hope this information isn't completely off.
UMTS 2100 in Europe was developed to carry both voice and data traffic. The UMTS networks were also placed on a different frequency band to prevent interference and eventual congestion in the GSM 900/1800 bands. The main reason why UMTS will be on 850/1900 in the US is because no other spectrum has been made available yet by the FCC. There are plans to open up another band for UMTS use (oddly enough 2100) but it is still marked as reserved for MSS by FCC: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UMTS#Real-world_implementations http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UMTS#Interoperatibility_and_global_roaming http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UMTS#Spectrum_allocation http://www.umtsworld.com/technology/frequencies.htm http://www.umtsworld.com/umts/faq.htm#f18
I did not know that 2100 allowed for voice calls as well. So do new handsets have the ability to carry voice calls on the 2100 bands as well I suppose?
Definitely, that's why all of the Eurasian UMTS handsets have 2 cameras : http://europe.nokia.com/phones/comp...ageaction=COMP&phone=N90&phone=N80&phone=6680 Here are two models: Nokia 6680: http://www.nokia.co.uk/nokia/0,,71025,00.html Motorola 1050: http://direct.motorola.com/ENG/web_producthome.asp?Country=GBR&language=ENG&productid=29525
Andy; UMTS is a Voice/Data network unlike EVDO which is data only. So yes you can make voice or data calls at 2100. Hope this helps.
Thank you for the clarification. I definitely need to learn more about UMTS. Well now that I have a Cingular handset to try maybe I'll get better.
I though I read somewhere (can't find it now)that Cingular is going to use just 1900 for UMTS for both uplink and downlink. Anyone have any more insight on that?
I agree , come back to Germany and see how good Vodafone's UMTS network is. I don't have a UMTS phone yet since it's not available for prepaid users yet and I also don't know anyone who uses UMTS.
Steve, yes Cingular is going to use 1900 for UMTS but also use 850 too. UMTS is also called WCDMA. The two frequencies are all that's avaliable in the US right now although in the up coming spectrum auction 2100 & 1700Mhz spectrum will be auctioned off so I wouldn't be suprised to see UMTS on those bands also. Hope this helps.:browani:
steve, this is dicussed in the links I posted in my very first post above: http://forums.wirelessadvisor.com/113531-post3.html
