Comment by toast0
3 days ago
> Why is having so many bands a bad thing? Demand for data is so much higher now you need (ideally) hundreds of MHz of spectrum in dense areas. You need some way to partition that up as you can't just have one huge static block of spectrum per auction.
Because different countries use different sets of bands. That was true for GSM too, but quad band phones were reasonably available. Many phones were at least tri band, so you would at least have half the bands if you imported a 'wrong region' tri-band.
But now, you'll have a real tough time with coverage in the US if you import a EU or JP phone.
With a "quad band" LTE phone of bands 2, 7, 20 and say 12 you would get pretty much worldwide coverage. It'd just be slower because you can't access other ones. Not sure what the issue is?
The issue is the import phones I want to buy don't suppprt those bands. An example phone I might want (Xperia 10 IV) supports 12 bands for LTE, my carrier (US T-Mobile) supports 6, but the intersection is only 2 bands (the old GSM bands) and I know my carrier doesn't always have coverage on those bands. I've got enough dead zones without throwing out 4 bands.
Plenty of phones support all reasonable bands. The intentional 4G brokenness is much worse.