Shadowprophet
Truthiness
Knowing a little about your Mobile Network can save you a lot of time and money when selecting devices that you may buy online or from a third party retailer What a lot of people may not know is, there is a lot of incompatible competition between network providers, There is GSM, WCDMA, and CDMA. How does this affect you, and what does it all mean?
Well, As we all know, Your Mobile network uses what is basically radio frequency to communicate back and forth to your provider Via your network. But, What some people may not realize is, Different providers, use different frequency bands on the Radio spectrum for a litany of reasons, One reason is so these frequencies won't interfere with one another, Another reason, that will hit many of us closer to home is simply so your phone provider can sell you a device that only works with their equipment and if you want another or better phone, Well you will have to buy it from them. So many reasons really.
Here is an example, AT&T uses WCDMA or GSM in some areas, Providers like Verison use CDMA. This is an important distinction because even though you would think WCDMA and CDMA are a related technology. They really couldn't be more different or incompatible with one another. CDMA Stands for Code Division Multiple access, While WCDMA stands for Wideband Code division multiple access.
You would think these technologies would be closely related or even compatible but truthfully, They are built from the ground up completely differently from one another, WCDMA is literally a 2G network that has been upgraded to a 3g or 4g network, While CDMA is a different technology that was built from the ground up as a 3g network and upgraded later By Verison to support 4g LTE.
A lot of people may not realize that 4g and 4g LTE are a completely different thing. While these networks can continue to be upgraded through the years becoming faster and more powerful, They are a completely different and incompatible technology.
You may wonder, Why is this important to know? Well, To be fair the only reason I've found is, you may want to order a device online from some other developer, Like a smartwatch or another phone, and to be honest, If you don't know the network carrier specifics your sim card or Nano sim may be incompatible.
The thing to know here is When you order a device online if you intend to put your sim card in it and use it, be it a tablet, A watch or another phone, It's terribly important to know, Is this Device, CDMA, WCDMA, GSM? Because even though the sim card will fit the device, if your device does not match your sim cards network frequency there really is nothing you can do to fix that. There is no app, No program that will allow you to change your network frequency to suit your device, It's literally impossible to do.
So, When you order your next device online, Buy with confidence, Knowing that you know your network carrier frequency and the frequency band of the device. It's a very handy bit of knowledge to have quite honestly
~SP
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