Disruptive Telephony

Replying to my last post about the new Blackberry 8830, Jim Courtney of Skype Journal left a comment clueing me into one minor little detail about the 8830's GSM support - it only works outside of North America!

Indeed, the GSM side of the 8830 operates at 900 and 1800 MHz which are used for GSM throughout the rest of the world, but it does not work at 850 and 1900 MHz, which are the frequencies used by GSM in North America.  The disappointment for me is that when I drive to Ottawa, there are patches of road in Ontario where there just isn't all that great CDMA... and it would be great if the 8830 would flip over to GSM to get the stronger signal.  However, that doesn't look like it will happen.

One wonders why not.  When RIM was creating the 8830, why didn't they include support for all 4 bands?  Is it perhaps because Verizon and other North American CDMA carriers want to keep people on CDMA in North America?  (You could see the case where in a particular NA city the GSM signal might be stronger in an area.  If the phone switches to that stronger GSM signal instead of staying on the weaker CDMA signal, the CDMA carrier would need to pay the GSM carrier.)

As a customer, I would really like the phone to switch to the strongest signal, regardless of whose network that is.

Jim Courtney offered his own view back in April: "Shouldn't Blackberry's Pure GSM Phones be the Real 'World Edition'?"