US 3G May Bring An End To Unbranded Phones
Received this today from Guest Author Ollywompus. It’s good stuff, stemming from numerous conversations he and I have had recently surrounding the N75…
Ok, so I’m VASTLY oversimplifying here, and being very dramatic too
boot. Unbranded phones will always be around… especially since
Europe has managed to keep things simple by implementing the same 3G
bands across all operators. But I still think there’s a point to be
made here, and that is this: the fragmentation of U.S. 3G is going to
mean that you have one of two choices: use the carrier branded phone,
or use a phone without 3G. For some folks (myself included) 3G is not
a TOTAL essential. Most of the time I’m fairly happy with EDGE speeds,
and with the abundance of WLAN access, and the inclusion of 802.11x
technology in most of the newer smartphones on the market, 3G not an
essential for me. But MAN would it be nice! I have visions of
streaming radio EVERYWHERE, without the hiccups or lower quality
streams provided by EDGE.
For others, such as your friendly Symbian-Guru host, it’s
become a necessity. He’s even gone so far as to say he’ll never buy a
primary phone without U.S. 3G again. Click below for a further explanation…
Therein lies the problem.
Unlocked, unbranded phones are the norm in most of Europe. There are
stores on London’s High Street that sell exclusively ‘SIM-free’ phones
(as they are known) for use on any of the operators available. Here in
the U.S., the unbranded/unlocked market has never really taken off.
Sure, those of us in the know generally prefer unbranded/unlocked
phones (or more properly, ‘uncrippled’ phones), but the average U.S.
consumer associates their phone with their carrier.
So combine these two facts: on the one hand, there is little
to no demand for unlocked/unbranded phones in the U.S. On the other
hand, U.S. 3G frequencies between the two largest GSM carriers
(Cingular and T-Mobile) are not going to match up, no matter how you
slice it. What you get, then, is a situation where phone manufacturers
like Motorola and Nokia, have no incentive to make an unlocked version
available to the public. The carrier, as it used to be, is once again
going to be in control of the handset to a degree we haven’t seen in
years. After all, what good is it to me that the n75 (as recently
reviewed here on Symbian-Guru) has 3G if it’s not compatible with my
carrier of choice, T-Mobile? Even if there WERE an unlocked version of
it, its 3G would be as useless to me on T-Mobile as a European 3G phone
is.
Now,
there IS a possible solution to this, but it’s both prohibitively
expensive, and not very feasible: produce a U.S. phone that has access
to both T-Mobile’s and Cingular’s 3G networks in it’s frequency range.
It’d be, basically, a phone supporting GSM 850/1900 (at the least, but even
this would make it unusable for world travel), and UMTS 850/1900,
1700/2100. In addition, if you wanted to make it a true world phone,
it’d be something like this: GSM 850/900/1800/1900, UMTS 850/1900,
1700/2100, 1900/2100 (Euro). Since there is not (as of yet) a single
radio that can run all of those bands, you’re looking at potentially 7
modes running in a phone: GSM, UMTS/HSDPA (Cing), UMTS/HSDPA (T-Mo),
UMTS/HSDPA (Euro), Bluetooth, Wifi, GPRS/EDGE.
Therein lies yet another problem. From a cost perspective, in order
to have an unlocked phone be successful, Nokia or Moto or whomever
needs that phone to be as adaptable to networks as possible. Why do
you think that SE’s phones that are European UMTS have not done as well
in the U.S.? Because they omit EDGE for the most part, and their 3G is
unusable. Nokia has done better, since all of their phones have EDGE,
but you still see my point.
Then there is the sheer technological problems associated with this. First off is battery life. Second off is bulk.
I’ve been pretty religious about not buying carrier branded
phones, with a couple of notable exceptions. I like the flexibility of
having a phone’s full firmware capabilities available; plus, I can buy
them without a contract, which is always a plus. But in the near
future, take my word for it, you are going to end up buying a carrier
branded phone if you’d like 3G. And when you leave your carrier to
port to a different one, you are going to have buy ANOTHER carrier
phone to use THEIR 3G.
I wish, sincerely, that there was a good way around this.
But the simple fact of the matter is this: as soon as cellular service
in the U.S. was allocated to the bands it was (some thirty-odd years
ago now), and cellular service in Europe was allocated to the bands
that IT was, the possibility of true interoperability became more and
more of a hurdle.
I
only hope that that mythical beast of a software-tuned radio becomes a
reality, because until then, a new era of carrier lock-in has just
begun.
This doom-and-gloom report brought to you by Symbian-Guru and Bored-At-Work Productions (TM).
-olly
**Editor’s Note** - I have to say I agree whole-heartedly with Olly. Something has to change, and for once I believe it’s going to have to be a technology breakthrough, as opposed to marketing or distribution. If HTC can put together a tri-band UMTS chip for the TyTn, then surely they can combine MORE bands. There was also a recent announcement that CSR (Who makes most of the world’s cellphones’ bluetooth chips) is going to begin incorporating GPS in the same chip. Personally I’d rather see something more useful like all the bands in one. As it stands, 3G is more useful than WiFi, but only for distribution and coverage. I wonder how long that will last….
I think you directly contradict olly’s point. For the next year or so, will things be bleak on the unbranded, unlocked 3G market? Hell yes. Especially for smart phones. However, in a years time, radio and battery tech will be more advanced. At this point (as you point out) the sheer number of bands that must be crammed into a phone is a huge problem. But we’ve been victims of product rollouts that take waaaaay too long, so an EDGE phone is rolling out as the first UMTS network is getting rolled out.
If there is some stability once things get established (Cing using 850, Tmo using something else), phone manufacturers can tackle this problem. They’ll have to.
But then it’ll be Wimax or UWB or some other tech someone wants to put in and the cycle starts over again.
@podking:
I think that Rcadden’s point fits mine well.. all he’s saying is that the FCC screwed up, Cingular and T-Mobile screwed up, so a frequency solution isn’t available. Therefore, really, technology has to change.
In my opinion, the timeline of screw-ups is something like this:
1970’s: FCC allocates different bands for Cell service then what Europe has allocated.
1990’s: Two standards emerge in the U.S. for future cell service; CDMA and GSM.
2000’s Part 1: FCC fails to clear spectrum for GSM to go 3G in N. America fast enough; VZW and Sprint are rolling out 3G, so Cing must respond… does so by rolling out on it’s currently licensed frequencies instead of seperate frequencies (like Europe did).
2000’s Part 2: T-mobile, in a crunch for spectrum, must roll out on the now freed 1700/2100 pairing.
Had the FCC had the foresite in the 70’s to try to match up European llcensing, we wouldn’t have this problem.
Had Qualcomm not gotten their panties in a twist, and backed GSM rather than CDMA, this wouldn’t be (as much) of a problem (very similar to Beta vs VHS, Blu-ray vs. HD-DVD, etc.)
Had Cingular not deployed on 850/1900 this wouldn’t be as much of a problem.
Had T-Mobile deployed on 850/1900 SLOWLY, by transitioning voice AND data to 850/1900, this wouldn’t be as much of a problem.
It’s a series of screw-ups that keep making the situation worse and worse, and at this point, regulatory solutions and/or inter-company standardization are out the window. It has to be a technological solution, or it will simply remain a clusterf*ck until WiBRO or something else gets deployed (you are definitely correct about that).
-olly
weren’t we in the same boat with gsm not too long ago? to this day, not every gsm phone is quad band. granted this is a slightly different, but the principle is the same: manufacturers now must cram more radio’s into their products. it’s only a matter of time b4 we start seeing an ‘octo band’ phone or the like.