Fair points - but from someone that's used LTE for a while now (on Verizon (tablet), Sprint (personal phone), and soon AT&T (work phone)), all I can say is that it's worth it. The latency improvement alone is worth the mess that defines current in-use frequency bands.
-----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Brian Weeden Sent: Tuesday, September 25, 2012 6:00 PM To: [email protected] Cc: [email protected] Subject: Re: [H] Five Reasons iPhone 5 Disappoints The biggest issue I have is with the LTE "standard" itself. There are somewhere around 15 different frequency bands being used for LTE, with each mobile operator implementing a network around the one or two bands they have licenses for. And since the technology generally only allows for a phone to support 4-5 bands, it's basically impossible right now to buy an LTE phone that works internationally. Here's how screwed up this is going to be. AT&T used to be the choice for international travelers like me because they had GSM phones which worked just about everywhere (except Japan and Korea) whereas Verizon's CDMA phones only worked in the US. However, AT&T's iPhone 5 only supports two LTE bands that are basically only used in North America: http://arstechnica.com/apple/2012/09/want-global-lte-roaming-on-iphone-5-don t-buy-it-from-att/ But Verizon's iPhone 5 supports 5 LTE bands that are used across many countries and is carrier unlocked out of the box so you can pop in a GSM SIM to avoid roaming charges: http://gigaom.com/apple/why-the-verizon-iphone-5-is-a-globetrotters-best-fri end/ That plus the crappy Apple Maps with no transit directions is making me wait to see what happens. ------- Brian Weeden Secure World Foundation +1 202 683-8534
