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UMTS stands for Universal Mobile Telecommunications System and is a third generation (3G) mobile cellular technology. There are a number of UMTS frequency bands used throughout the world. When purchasing devices that claim to provide 3G connectivity it is important to know what frequency bands it will be compatible with especially if you travel.
Common tri-band UMTS modems work with the 850, 1900 and 2100 frequencies. A quad-band UMTS modem (for example the Huawei EM770W) works additionally with the 900 frequency providing extended support in Europe and Asia. However the terms tri-band and quad-band refer only to the number of bands utilised and cannot always tell you which bands they are. There are 15 bands in total, so always checking which bands are supported and which you require is essential groundwork. To help you along here is a List of UMTS networks citing the respective frequency.
To confuse the whole terminology further the tri-band/quad-band terms may also refer to the GSM (2G) bands as well as the 3G bands. For example a modem may be quad-band GSM (2G) and tri-band UMTS (3G). This article won't be covering the GSM bands, however the typical four bands employed in a quad-band GSM modules are 850, 900, 1800, 1900.
The table below outlines the four main UMTS frequencies and the regions to which they correlate. Many countries operate multiple frequencies across the various operators. If your operator isn't mentioned explicitly it would be useful for you to know which frequency your operator uses.
|
UMTS Frequency |
Region |
|
850 |
Americas (AT&T, Bell Mobility, Telcel, Telus, Rogers), Oceania (Telstra, Vodafone Hutchison Australia, Telecom NZ), Dominican Republic (Claro), Hong Kong (SmarTone-Vodafone), Thailand (TrueMove), Brazil (Claro, Vivo), Philippines (Smart Communications) |
|
900 |
Europe, Asia (Hong Kong CSL Limited), Oceania (Optus, Vodafone AU, Vodafone NZ), Dominican Republic (Orange), Venezuela (Digitel GSM), Thailand (AIS) |
|
1900 |
Americas (AT&T, Bell Mobility, Telcel, Telus, Rogers), Venezuela (Movilnet, Movistar) |
|
2100 |
Europe, Asia, Africa, Oceania (Telstra, Optus, Vodafone AU & NZ, Three Mobile AU, 2° and Telecom NZ), Brazil |
UMTS Notes
There are as many as 11 other frequency bands not depicted on this table and it is not the purpose of this article to detail them all. However it is worth noting that Japan makes use of the 800 frequency (NTT docomo), 1500 frequency (SoftBank Mobile) and 1700 frequency (E Mobile, NTT docomo). Huawei make a tri-band EM770J that covers the 800, 1700 and 2100 bands.
The other notable frequency in use is the 700 band utilised in USA by Verizon Wireless.
Alternative 3G technologies
Although UMTS is the most widely used 3G technology there is another standard name Evolution-Data Optimized, or EV-DO. Although not as widespread as UMTS the EVDO standard is used in Canada by Bell Mobility, SaskTel and Telus as well as in USA by Sprint and Verizon. |
