Yes,

Japan and Korea's domestic standards are different from one another. Korea is essentially an 800mhz CDMA country -- some Verizon handsets work. WCDMA is new for both countries and represent Japan and Korea's attempt to interconnect with the rest of the World.

North America isn't using 2100 MHz for W-CDMA because it's already been deployed for other purposes.

I don't think there is any giant conspiracy about it. If it were available, it would be a no-brainer to use it for this.

Ok, but maybe it would have been smarter to talk about it BEFORE, with European and Asiatic "friends" and decide to use a unique frequency. And also deciding to use 2, why the Americans cannot use just 1 for their 2 operators? It's nonsense that AT&T uses 1900 and T-Mob 1700.

TM doesn't have as many licenses as ATT and not nearly the bandwidth in areas where they do have licenses. ATT has both 1900 and the original 800 (850) licenses. T-M's forrerunners came into the game when there were only 1900 licenses available. That was why it was essential for T-M to bid for 1700 licenses when that opened up.

...mike

In the next few years we'll also see 700MHz devices out there as Canada and the US are starting to auction this spectrum off.