Cellular, PCS, GSM, and Japanese
Digital Cellular Frequencies Table
These tables are frequency information for the cellular, PCS, GSM, and Japanese Digital Cellular frequencies. This frequency range is current and phones in these ranges are in current production. Information will change most likely. These listings are only for information as it is illegal to monitor, record or disclose the contents of a cellular or cordless telephone conservation! In order to test the phone operation via scanner, it is often necessary to program both the transmit and receive frequencies to enable both sides of the conversation.
This table lists a few frequency allocations for common cellular and PCS services around the world. It is from this information, immediately clear why you can not easily travel with your cell phone, often in the same region or country. There are few if any standards and different countries use different frequencies, depending on their needs with the radio spectrum. The mobile technology produces elaborate units but the can't tune themselves automatically to the frequencies they find. They need the combination of the right hardware, software, and pseudo intelligence to use different frequencies. Those are reasons why travelers need what the industry terms dual or triple band phones to use phone service overseas. These units have additional circuitry built in to use the different frequencies in the countries most often traveled. Dual mode (as opposed to band) phones, by comparison, are those few that operate in perhaps a digital CDMA operating system, but can also use a non digital system like AMPS when no PCS signal is found. Sprint, a leader in the PCS industry, makes such a phone. The problem of few standards, if any, has tormented the electronics industry for years and is doing the same now in the cellular - PCS divisions. Every company, country, engineer and political figure feels that the idea they have is the RIGHT way to do things. The long discussed philosophy of radios instead of phones makes more sense than the current methodology. The future promises us even more operating systems and far more different frequency allocations, and my guess is, the problems that go with them.
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General Frequency Table
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American Cellular |
| AMPS, N-AMPS, D-AMPS (IS-136) CDMA |
- 824-849 MHz
- 869-894 MHz
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- Mobile to base
- Base to mobile
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American PCS
|
| Narrowband |
901-941
MHz |
|
| Broadband |
- 1850-1910MHz
- 1930-1990 MHz
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- Mobile to base
- Base to mobile
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E-TACS |
| |
- 872-905 MHz
- 917-950 MHz
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- Mobile to base
- Base to mobile
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| GSM |
- 930-960MHz
- 890-915MHz
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JDC |
| |
- 810-826 MHz
- 940-956 MHz
- 1429-1441 MHz
- 1477-1489 MHz
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- Mobile to base
- Base to mobile
- Base to mobile
- Mobile to base
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Version 1.0.1
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