In the past, my gripe about US cellular technologies has been that there is no standardization, so I can’t just buy a phone and go to any carrier (like I can in the rest of the world). The US used GSM, iDEN, CDMA, TDMA and AMPS. Luckily in recent years it’s really just come down to GSM and CDMA since the rest of the technologies are already laid to rest (AMPS and TDMA) or have one foot in the grace (iDEN). Most phones are Quadband GSM, so I can use my Phone with AT&T, T-Mobile, or any of the MVNOs that are on GSM.

3G is a bit of a quagmire. Most of the word uses the 1900/2100Mhz frequency pair for UMTS (3G GSM). The US on the other hand uses the 850Mhz, 1900Mhz and 1700/2100 pair for 3G. There are no Quadband 3G phones (yet). This is somewhat problematic for a ‘one phone for any carrier’ type of person…and CDMA is still holding in there, which means that I can’t just take my AT&T phone to Verizon, Sprint or AllTel (or Bell and Telus in Canada).

Here comes 4G. Of course 4G is 3 years (or so) into the future. All existing GSM/UMTS carriers around the world have decided that they are going with LTE for the 4G technology. Verizon announced that they are going to LTE, recently so did AllTel. Cool! This means, that when the time comes, I can have one phone that will work around the world, with any carrier! Just swap out the SIM! If I get sick of AT&T, I can go to Verizon, or T-Mobile, or AllTel. Sprint on the other hand…who knows! They might be bought by Deutche Telekom in the next few years, so they may be part of T-Mobile ;-)