I've been looking at phones lately (no thanks to the iPhone!) and I must say that I am seeing some absurdities with the selection of bands. GSM had five bands (frequencies), although only four are used. THe original band was 900Mhz, then 1800Mhz rolled out in Europe, 1900Mhz and 850Mhz followed suit in the Americas and 450Mhz was tested but never deployed. This was a 2G technology

Now we've got 3G rolling out. We started with 2100Mhz and we rejoiced! This would be the one band to unify the world! Well, no! at&t came in and decided to use 1900Mhz and 850Mhz as well! OK, phones are triband 3G now (well some anyway), and T-Mobile US comes out with 1700Mhz, and some carriers in Europe are experimenting with 900Mhz...that's five bands!

Nokia phones aren't triband (the iPhone and some HTC handsets are). With nokia handsets you get 2100, or 1900/850, or 2100/900 or 2100/850... Just make a quintband 3G chip already! I wonder what LTE is going to bring...

This sort of reminds me of a recent Hollowmen episode I watched. The think tank had a 6-point plan for the Prime Minister, but they could not implement it. So... they came up with a 4-point plan, to make the 6-point plan a 2-point plan. Hillarious, until you think about it!