Technology news and Jobs arrow Fuzzy Logic arrow Quad-band 3G iPhone to ‘qonquer’ the world?
Quad-band 3G iPhone to ‘qonquer’ the world? E-mail
by Alex Zaharov-Reutt   
Friday, 16 May 2008
I then asked about the rollout of more 900MHz phones, and was informed that: “In addition to the Nokia 6121, which is already available, Vodafone will be progressively launching a range of 3G 900MHz capable products over the coming months.”
 
As you might expect, given the brevity of the iPhone announcements from Optus and Vodafone, there was no specific hint that the iPhone that Vodafone Australia will sell “later this year” would be operating on the 900MHz frequency.

Well, no specific hint beyond the fact that Vodafone (and Optus) will be “progressively launching a range of 3G 900MHz capable products over the coming months”, and that “Vodafone Australia’s forthcoming range of mobile phones will be dual-band 3G, supporting both 3G 900 MHz and 2100 MHz. The expectation is that 3G tri-band and quad-band products will be available in the future.”

I’d like to think that this could well mean the 3G iPhone will offer 900MHz. But I can only speculate, as there is no specific mention of the iPhone.

As we all know, Apple does things Apple’s way. If they don’t want to offer a tri-band, or better still, a quad-band iPhone, Apple won’t do it, even though we might all think that such an outcome would be completely stupid.

The rest of Vodafone’s 3G phones could well be dual-band, tri-band and quad-band for 3.5G, but not the iPhone. Surely, though, it will be one of those three possibilities, with quad-band being the obvious choice, but we’ll have to wait until June 9 to find out.

After all, plenty of people think the iPod should have an FM radio, an inbuilt microphone and a Micro SD HC expansion card socket, but Apple steadfastly refuses to include them, preferring to sell FM radio and microphone accessories, or allowing third party manufacturers to make them.

In addition, the iPhone should have full Bluetooth support for keyboards and A2DP stereo Bluetooth headsets with track and volume controls, yet Apple has so far refused to play that game, while an iPhone FM radio is also currently not built-in.

Still, if Apple doesn’t include the 900MHz standard, Vodafone and Optus will only be able to sell the expected 3G iPhone as a 2G-only device in rural and regional Australia, where 900MHz phone towers will proliferate, with 2100MHz towers only in the cities.

And that doesn’t make sense to me. We’ll just have to wait and see! And wait to see whether Telstra joins the iPhone party – or stays on the sidelines while Vodafone and Optus crunch through all the juicy Apple iPhone profits.

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