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The LTE Band Challenge
April 11, 2010 - (WirelessMoves) With LTE, the complexity of including a reasonable number of different frequency bands in a mobile device not only for LTE but also for GSM and UMTS is once again getting trickier. Here's a how I see things from a historical point of view and where I think we are heading:
Once upon a time the wireless frequency landscape was quite simple. When GSM started in Europe, there was only a single frequency band in the 900 MHz band which all network operators used. Sure there was the legacy analog network in the 450 MHz band but nobody seriously thought about working on dual mode devices. GSM or bust! Things got a bit more complicated when the second band in the 1800 MHz range was opened for GSM at the end of the 90's and but it didn't take take device manufacturers long to come up with dual mode devices. In the US things were pretty similar but the remainder of this post continues with a Europe point of view.