[PhotoJim]

I'm glad you had a good experience in Canada. Your experiences lacking GSM 850 roughly matched what I would have expected. The difference in coverage area is not that large.

Even in the rural areas, GSM 1900 is pretty good in Canada. I have taken major highway journeys (e.g. Regina to Calgary to Edmonton to Regina) with a tri-band phone and had good coverage the whole way.

I even have a couple of tri-band phones that I got in Europe this summer (a Sony-Ericsson Z310i with EDGE, and an S-E K610i that doesn't have EDGE but does have UMTS 2100) and service is quite good. I don't find myself wanting for GSM 850 all that often.

The US, now, is a different matter. There are places that have GSM 850 coverage and no GSM 1900 at all.

As for European coverage, I don't have any tri-band phones that lack GSM 900 so I can't really comment, except to say that I was really surprised at how good Orange's coverage was in some places (it's GSM 1800 only). I did notice in London though that I tended to lose Orange before I lost O2 or Vodafone.