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Triband phones are really only a partial solution to roaming. If you want decent coverage and access to a choice of networks you need to be able to access both 900Mhz and 1800Mhz GSM in Europe and 850Mhz and 1900Mhz in the US/Canada. So, quad band's the only way to go!

Ireland for example allocates a mixture of 900Mhz and 1800Mhz spectrum to each of the GSM providers. They tend to use 900Mhz for 'blanket coverage' and then supplement it with 1800Mhz cells in busier areas in city centres.

I know the UK originally allocated exclusively 900Mhz or 1800Mhz licences. So, the likes of Vodafone and O2 were on 900Mhz only as they were the oldest operators and then the newer players like T-Mobile and Orange would have had 1800Mhz allocations. I'm not sure if this is the case anymore, or if everyone's spread across both sets of frequencies now ?

Here's what my phone picks up:


3G:

UMTS 2100(Europe and Japan)
HSDPA 2100 (Europe and Japan) (next generation 3G

GSM 850 (North America)
GSM 900 (Europe)
GSM 1800 (Europe)
GSM 1900(North America)
GPRS and EDGE

The current deployment of 3G services in Europe and Japan is quite standardised as UMTS 2100, marketed as 3GSM which uses WCDMA with a 2110-2200Mhz downlink and a 1885-2025Mhz uplink.

The European 3GSM spec, has a full backwards compatibility with existing GSM services, so handsets will fall back onto 2G networks where 3G is unavailable.

Japanese handsets have similar backwards compatibility with older Japanese 2G networks.

UMTS/3GSM allows roaming between Europe and Japan for the first time too, but only using 3G services as there are no existing GSM networks in Japan.

As 3G handsets replace existing 2G models, EU networks will have the option of opening up 900Mhz and 1800Mhz UMTS services and reducing capacity on 2G GSM. The plan is that ultimately, 2G services can be phased out completely, although there's no clear time scale to when this will happen just yet. It's likely that some 2G spectrum will remain on air for quite a while to come.

However, the US allocations are really strange quite odd and incompatible and likely to cause issues for roaming, even nationally within the US.

Frequencies allocated in the US:
1710-1755Mhz + 2110-2155Mhz
Also, it's sharing space with GSM and CDMA in the 850Mhz and 1900Mhz slots with no defined uplink or downlink frequencies on some networks

The FCC's history with licensing mobile spectrum is pretty poor to be honest. They seem to have caused chaos during the initial digital rollouts for GSM/CDMA in the 90s and now seem to be doing the same with 3G services.

Telstra in Australia's also allocated 850Mhz UMTS. Again, I am not sure what the logic of this is..

It's a shame really, as cooperation between Europe and Japan has meant that all the countries using standard European style GSM (i.e. most of the planet) and Japan now have standardised network interfaces. While the US/Canada and a few other places are once again coming up with a strange tweaked version of the global standard.

There's no particular technical advantage to the European/Japanese solution but, it makes life a LOT easier for end users and handset manufacturers if things are kept standardised.