Talk:Cellular frequencies in the United States

There are so many inaccuracies in the main content of this page, i.e. the frequencies and where they are used. Researching this will take a l;as columns. NFH 08:30, 17 June 2006 (UTC)

Wait, since when has the 896-901/935-940 MHz band been allocated for cellular usage? According to 47 CFR Part 90 Subpart C, that's still allocated to the Industrial/Business Pool, not cellular. I don't think that Nextel can use it for SMR, but if anything, that's where it should be. And the frequency range for SMR is wrong. It's not all used by Nextel, 866-869 is reserved for Public Safety, which will be changed to 851-854 as soon as rebanding is completed.

Since the FCC ceased to be the worldwide regulator for cellular frequencies. 900MHz is used in much of the world, including the entirety of Europe, for cellular access. This article is not specific to the US.

Privacy?

So, wait, if I had a scanner or other receiver that could receive those frequencies, could I listen to people's cell phone conversations.. or do most carriers use some form of encryption?

I think only AMPS and N-AMPS were not encrypted. The US Courts ruled (need ref) that if you make any kind of attempt to encrypt the transmission then it is protected otherwise it is free to intercept. As of 2021, all modern mobile telephone transmissions are encrypted. Mrdvt92 (talk) 20:03, 25 May 2021 (UTC)

Update

AT&T's 3G network in deployed on the 850 and 1900 Mhz bands in the USA.

US focus

Why is a significant part of this article focused on the US only? To the point where it includes information of the frequency bands used by the major carriers, when there is another article that should take care of that. Frequency spectrum regulation happens in every country, and the specifics of the US alone would probably warrant an entirely different article. This one should be used for a more generalized/global view without getting into certain regional specifics. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 50.133.129.84 (talk) 15:41, 23 July 2012 (UTC)

Can someone add a comment about the "H" band to this, please. It just barely covers the others, but as a reference...it works 198.175.154.212 (talk) 17:52, 12 March 2014 (UTC)Robert

What are the bands' bounds?

If you look at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cellular_frequencies_in_the_US you will see a number of bands such as 800, 850, 1900, 1700 2100, L700, U700, etc. So my question is can somebody here actually tell me what the upper and lower frequency bounds of each of these bands are? Also there are several sets of bounds. For example there's the 800 band listed with 2G, the 800 band listed with 3G, and the 800 band listed with 4G LTE. My question is do each of those bands have the same upper and lower bounds? Or does each of those 800 bands have different upper and lower bounds? And where can I find this information? Wikipedia doesn't seem to have it. 2601:601:F00:1010:6CEE:4A:7A47:BA4D (talk) 20:24, 15 February 2017 (UTC)

Hi. Please refer to LTE frequency bands, UMTS frequency bands and GSM frequency bands. These tables hold all information you are looking for. Nightwalker-87 (talk) 19:03, 16 February 2017 (UTC)

CBRS band

@Nightwalker-87: The US will use band 48 for the CBRS band. See 3GPP report 36.744 . Quote:

Operating band number and the EARFCN allocated for 3.5GHz TDD band in the USA (3550-3700 MHz) are outlined in Table 9-1 and 9-2 respectively.

E UTRA Operating Band: [48] E-UTRA channel numbers: 55240 – 56739

Thanks for the note. So far everything looked like as if band 42 would be harmonized by ITU in Regions 1, 2 and 3 including the US. So now there is another fragmentation on the horizon - so sad... I found the new band here in the meanwhile: Everything is fine. Nightwalker-87 (talk) 17:05, 21 April 2017 (UTC)

@Nightwalker-87: Band 42 does not even cover the whole range of the CBRS band. See page 8 of Google's presentation. It would be totally silly to switch between 42 and 43. One of the requirement of the CBRS band is that devices must work across the whole range because the band is shared by various basestation owners kind of like Wi-Fi but unlike Wi-Fi channels are assigned by Spectrum Access System (SAS). SAS can anytime command any CBRS basestation to switch for example from 3555 GHz channel to 3695 GHz. A band 42-only device connected to such basestation would totally lose connectivity. Unfortunately as the demand for data rises it's hard to find harmonized spectrum. Sbsail (talk) 20:20, 21 April 2017 (UTC)

Well, but that is in general a major intention of ITU an regional spectrum management groups and regulatory bodies. Examples are APT 700, EUDD800, IMT 2000, B40 @2300MHz, IMT-E 2600, L-Band 1500. When looking at the E-UTRA band list specified by 3GPP one finds that most fragmentation seems to occur in the US, while quite a few other bands are widely deployed across the globe. So this is actually not the point. As one can see it is indeed possible. Nightwalker-87 (talk) 21:55, 21 April 2017 (UTC)

@Nightwalker-87: Well, Google was one of the companies that agreed to create a new band. If Google can't figure it out, ITU can't as well. The US has more federal spectrum users such as military than other countries. Part of the blame lies with the FCC because they are always eager to give spectrum somebody as soon as possible. But on the other hand spectrum would be lying fallow. Often, spectrum that would be nice to harmonize was given out a decade ago.

Surprisingly the USDD600 bandplan makes use of 5 MHz blocks instead of maintaining the old TV frequency grid that caused fragmentation leading to reduced availablitiy of bandwidth in the 700 MHz range. Further it is compatible with both APT700 and LSMH/USMH700 band plans. This makes it likely that it will come into use in other parts of the world in future. Looking back, though the 700 MHz band was availble very soon, this fact reduced device compatibility in early years and somehow inhibited mobile development with a view to LTE, especially when looking at other countries. So actually the FCC practise then was more or less contraproductive. If they proceeded as they did now with the USDD600 bandplan the world would have seen an APT700-like bandplan to be adopted from 2008 on already... Nightwalker-87 (talk) 09:27, 22 April 2017 (UTC)

LTE in unlicensed spectrum

T-Mobile and Verizon are starting to deploy LTE-U in unlicensed spectrum. See T-Mobile Galaxy S8 supported bands. T-Mobile and Verizon are open to deploying LTE-LAA (band 46) but due to urgency and equipment availability they are starting with LTE-U. Sbsail (talk) 20:47, 21 April 2017 (UTC)

Yellow boxes in table

The table has no explanation as to why all 2G & 3G uses of the 1900 PCS band (except US Cellular), and T-Mobile's 3G use of the 1700/2100 AWS band, are in yellow instead of green or red (obviously "yes" & "no" respectively). It can't mean limited licenses; T-Mobile's single 800 CLR license is in green in the LTE section. It could mean legacy, but if so why aren't all non-LTE boxes flagged that way? --RBBrittain (talk) 09:38, 3 February 2018 (UTC)

Hi RBBrittain. I've added a legend and updated the table to clarify. Mainly the PCS1900 band is currently being refarmed. Depending on the spectrum allocation in the individual regional/local markets, operators try to use larger contiguous spectrum blocks for 4G/LTE, leaving non-contiguous blocks for legacy 2G/3G services. CDMA services are tentatively shifted to 800 or 850 MHz. Verizon for example plans to use remaining CDMA technology for IoT. In general it is difficult to draw the whole picture due to the fragmented mobile market in the US with different types of spectrum licenses. Nightwalker-87 (talk) 12:22, 3 February 2018 (UTC)