On Sat, 2007-01-13 at 15:16 +0800, Xiaofan Chen wrote:
> > I realize North America, a section of South America and I believe China
> > use other standards, but correct me if I'm wrong, in those areas (except
> > perhaps China) GSM is also offered.
> 
> For 2G/2.5G, the dominate standard in China is GSM. The bigges
> player China Mobile (http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=CHL)
> uses GSM. The 2nd largest player China Unicom
> (http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=CHU) has both GSM and CDMA
> network. There are no commercial 3G service in China yet.

Thanks Xiaofan, I was completely unsure which way China had gone with
cell phones.

> > Frankly, I don't see anything else a better choice, GSM is by far the
> > most common cell phone standard in the world.
> >
> 
> Yes I agree. I used to have a Verizon CDMA phone and it is not
> useful back in Singapore. This time I brought the Tri-band mobile
> phone used in Singapore to US and I just need to use the prepaid
> service from T-Mobile (wrong choice, should have used Cingular)
> and I got the service.
> 
> Japan and South Korea seem to only use CDMA.

Wow, I never knew Japan and Korea don't have basic GSM! Thanks for that.
According to: http://www.gsmworld.com/roaming/gsminfo/cou_jp.shtml the
only "gsmish" coverage they have is 3G at 2100MHz, which all non 3G
phones will never see. 

It seems 3G is common at 2100MHz in at least Europe (in North America
we're always behind with cell phones, and usually do things an
incompatible way, it appears we're doing 3G in the 850/1900MHz band,
great, more incompatibilities...) so you're OK in Japan as long as your
phone supports 3G at 2100.

Thanks for the info Xiaofan.

TTYL

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