The new iPhone comes out and all I can think of is the broader implications.

There seems to be a $50 pre-tax price difference between the top end Canadian and US models. The US market certainly has scale but there’s 2 models due to network configurations amongst partner carriers. How many for Canada? All the major carriers are running GSM, as opposed to the US’ GSM & CDMA.

I wondered how many bands can the LTE radio support? Clearly the configuration matrix is smaller, with a number of reports noting the limited roaming functionality. So I decided to look at little closer at the band plans. I took the below LTE network data from Wikipedia but it’s probably accurate enough for late night musing.

AT&T Model
GSM model A1428

UMTS/HSPA+/DC-HSDPA (850, 900, 1900, 2100 MHz);
GSM/EDGE (850, 900, 1800, 1900 MHz);
LTE (Bands 4 and 17)

  • AT&T Mobility, Cricket Wireless, Metro PCS – Band 4 (2100/1700 MHz)
  • AT&T Mobility – Band 17 (700 MHz) * Only carrier in the world currently to use for LTE
  • Rogers, Bell and Telus – Band 4 (2100/1700 MHz) * Known as AWS

 

Verizon & Sprint Model
CDMA model A1429
CDMA EV-DO Rev. A and Rev. B (800, 1900, 2100 MHz);
UMTS/HSPA+/DC-HSDPA (850, 900, 1900, 2100 MHz);
GSM/EDGE (850, 900, 1800, 1900 MHz);
LTE (Bands 1, 3, 5, 13, 25)

  • Sprint Nextel – Band 25 (1900 MHz) * Only carrier in the world currently to use for LTE
  • Verizon Wireless – Band 13 (700 MHz) * Only other carrier in the world currently using is in Uzbekistan

 

No North American Carriers Currently
GSM model A1429
UMTS/HSPA+/DC-HSDPA (850, 900, 1900, 2100 MHz);
GSM/EDGE (850, 900, 1800, 1900 MHz);
LTE (Bands 1, 3, 5)

  • Primarily Asian Carriers – Band 1 (2100 MHz)
  • European and Asian Carriers – Band 3 (1800 MHz) * Most widely deployed frequency
  • 2 South Korean Carriers – Band 5 (850 MHz) * Legacy 2G band in Canada

Aside: Kevin Fitchard, writing at GigaOM, notes that there’s no configuration for Band 20 (800 MHz) or Band 7 (2600 MHz) — with Band 7 covering a large number of global countries and Band 20, which Germany and Sweden have targeted for LTE.

 

Because of the configuration, it seems plausible that only the “AT&T model” will be imported into Canada to the major carriers. Apple’s webstore doesn’t appear to offer the choice, though it does come “unlocked”, and I’m assuming that it should run on all the Canadian LTE carriers’ (ie, the Big 3) networks.

This seems to suggest three items. One, the entire Canadian market doesn’t have enough scale to match those of the big US carriers — either Apple won’t discount further or the Canadian carriers are driving the costs up themselves trying to acquire a higher amount of the market. Two, that Apple and/or the Canadian carriers (comparable models $399 on two-year contract in US, $379 on three-year contract in Canada) will find the margins for the launching of the newest iTelephone to be much better north of the border. Three, that if you wanted an iPhone that could roam in countries with CDMA networks, you must sacrifice LTE in Canada.

Areas for further research. Will these radios work if the 700 MHz frequency ends up being widely deployed with LTE-Advanced? Does this suggest that LTE-Advanced is going to have an even longer gestation period? I remember reading sometime ago that the current LTE basestations would be upgradeable to LTE-Advanced through a software upgrade. Maybe it was that they are already “dual mode”?

No matter what anyone says, I’m still clearly no radio engineer. Though I think I was successful with my summer reading.