Tri-band Without 900 Useless?

[Przemolog]

Originally Posted by Effendi

GSM 850/1800/1900 has sense because Brazil is 1800 only and also several little central American countries are using 1800 as well. That's the reason why Cingular has this kind of triband phones.

OK, but even we consider Americas only, there are 900-only countries out there. According to gsmworld.com, these are Guyana, Cuba and Venezuela. There are also some 900/1800 or 900/1900 networks in small Caribbean countries and I'm not sure if 1800 or 1900 coverage isn't smaller than 900 coverage. OK, I admit that Cuba and Venezuela are very Uncle Sam unfriendly so it's not a big problem after all....

Originally Posted by Effendi

Generally speaking there should be no or little problems in big cities. France and Italy haven't a 1800-only operator, but Wind and Bouygues have mostly 1800 and usually 900 is on the EGSM band configured to be used when you don't have 1800 (so the opposite which Przemolog wrote, which applies to mainly 900MHz operators, with 1800 in cities). Something similar should happen in Switzerland. No problems in UK, DE, NL.

Yes, you're right. My concern was mainly about "historically" 900-only operators which use 1800 just to enhance capacity, not to have extra coverage. AFAIK (but, again, it may be a kind of urban legend) they may be configured in such way that they don't work with 1800-only phones