Best cell phone company for 3G

[dilanium]

Hrmmm- Maybe it's because I've heard stories about AT&T refusing to unlock iPhones from the US?

[James 1077]

Will the I phone work with either extended 3G? I though most phones were Either 900/2100 OR 850/2100. With Vodaphone NZ on the 900/2100 and XT on 850/2100.

Not wishing to perpetuate myths, but everything I've seen about XT didn't inspire confidence if you want to rely on your phone for calls. May be worth checking.

According to the website the phone can do:

UMTS/HSDPA (850, 1900, 2100 MHz)
GSM/EDGE (850, 900, 1800, 1900 MHz)

This may only be the 3GS or they may sell different versions elsewhere.

I think that Voda's 3G network is only 2100 in the cities and outside of the cities is 900 so the iPhone won't work as fast outside of the main city centres.

The XT network is 850 / 2100 so the phone will have 3G access everywhere it gets a signal; but there isn't a GSM backup should the 3G network go down.

More on the iPhone in NZ here.

Unfortunately the XT network has gone down a few times (but has since had many millions spent on it) so the lack of GSM backup has been sorely missed (when Voda's 3G network goes down it barely makes the news as people can still use their phones and many don't notice it!)

That said XT has had quite a few millions spent on it recently and seems to be running OK now. But there are no guarantees that everything is now fixed and Alcatel continue to do lots of work on it!

[Note: I'm a Telecom employee so have a natural bias towards the XT network; which should be a great network once those blasted French can sort it out! ]

[zoe305]

Our iPhone is unlocked, as are our other phones, which are all gsm. We avoid cell phone contracts like the plague so we plan to keep existing phones probably

[Duncan74]

But annoyingly you can't get any sim ony pay mothly deals in NZ. Ie the ones that don't have a 24 months contract. Which means I'm essentially stuck on PAYG.

[kraiklyn]

Telecom do a SIM only monthly deal for $14.99 including 20 mins calls and 150 texts if you have a landline with them also. Not bad if you are a light user.

I use the said plan on my iPhone and all works well.

[Duncan74]

Sadly won't have a landline, and as I'm from the Uk then the 80gversion of 3G is no use, so will get virtualy no coverage. And coming drom the Uk with 1200 free minutes, 500MB and 400 texts per month for £30 this is going to take some getting used to! Although it does remind me of buying my first motorala MR20 phone in 1997 where £15 got you 15 minutes free time!

[mattandjax]

Sadly won't have a landline, and as I'm from the Uk then the 80gversion of 3G is no use, so will get virtualy no coverage.

Duncan what did you mean by 80gversion of 3G?

[Duncan74]

Doh, blinking keyboards. 850Ghz is what I meant.

Back to the frequencies again. As listed in James' post above on 2nd May 2010, 10:11 PM.

In the UK, then 3G means operating on 2100Mhz, or 900Mhz for all operators. So all phones work the same. Voice, or GSM (occasionally referred to as 2.5g) is totally different to this, don't let the two confuse).

BUT, in the US and a few other places, then instead of it being 900Mhz then the low freqency 3G frequency is at 850Mhz. Now 2100Mhz is much higher capacity, and more people can use it, so in cities it's all the 2100masts. But the range is pretty short, so the operators use the lower 'option' frequency to get better coverage. You can't get phones that have both UMTC 850 and 900Mhz UMTC (but you can get phones with the the old slow 2G on 850 and 900).

So, what I was saying is that bringing a UK phone (which means it will have 900Mhz UMTC) I'm pretty much tied to Vodaphone NZ, as 2 degrees doesn't have 3G at all yet, and when it does will be 2100 only, and so only work in urban areas, and XT of course will work in urban areas (on 2100) it won't work in rural areas as it's the wrong frequency.

I assume that in the UK because of the dense population, then the whole country is pretty much covered with the 2100Mhz UTMC coverage, so the lack of 900 isn't an issue with iphones, and they just drop to 2G speeds.

[mattandjax]

Thanks Duncan that makes total sense.

So with an Iphone I could really do with being on Vodafone NZ or 2 Degrees as long as I can live with a slower connection outside urban areas.

Think I will go with Vodafone as for $40 I can get 100mb of data (more than enough for me) 1 best mate and also some pittance of a call allowance (but as I will be mainly calling / texting Jax it should be fine)

The 10c texts to the UK on 2 Degrees are tempting though, if only they had a data bundle rate as 50c a MB is ridiculously expensive (makes the Vodafone 100mb $10 add on cost $50).

[Duncan74]

Not that simple.

First off, 2 Degrees has no 3G at all at the moment. Also, check their international text agreements, basically you can't text (or receive texts one or the other) from UK Vodaphone numbers). And I suspect that your UK iphone is actually 850Mhz, which in theory would be better with XT. But then that has bad reviews for reliability, so who knows.

And isn't vodaphone NZ $10 for 100mb on PAYG (or $30 for 512mb)? Or was the other $30 for the best mate.... If contract that would mean signing up to a long term contract, and as you're not gaining a phone from it I can't see that being sensible or 'fair'.