Universal World Roaming Phone: Frequent Travelers Still Waiting
A Techweb story discusses how world travelers still don't have access to a phone that truly can roam to all other countries. Such a phone needs to not only work at multiple frequencies, but also to work with multiple types of networks, GSM and CDMA being the most important. There is some hope on the horizon, though, as Qualcomm has produced a phone chip that is capable of handling both network types in a one-chip solution that keeps costs down. Phone manufacturers like Samsung are putting the chip into phones with radios that are multi-band, so the phone will be able to work in many countries. The linked article, however, really crosses wires and for some reason has mixed the story about Vodafone launching 3G for laptops with a worldwide roaming story...Odd. Either way, I have a fairly thorough breakdown of the woes of worldwide roaming at my site if anyone wants to know why their phones don't work globally.
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