Personally I think Verizon is crazy to be giving up 750 MHz spectrum to go with 1.9 ghz and 2.1 ghz spectrum. I think they're doing it because you can place more towers in closer proximity using higher frequencies than you can using 750 MHz. The signal traveling further in 750 MHz also causes you to interfere with yourself, so by going to higher frequencies they can place more towers, which enables them to distribute the bandwidth across multiple towers.
So look for higher speed capabilities, and also more consistent speeds. It should improve the reliability if they are in fact going to put up more towers. Just don't expect to get much better performance than ATT or TMobile inside, since these are similar frequencies to what they run on.
Anyone that used Sprint WiMAX can tell you how bad higher frequencies penetrate buildings.
I hope the frequency change will improve the signal's ability to penetrate into buildings where I work. My service is magnificent, except for at work. There, it is positively dreadful.
Sadly, looks like it's a moot point anyway, til I upgrade to my next device.
Sent from my HTC DNA
They're not "giving up" anything. The AWS bands will be an overlay in congested areas.
They're giving up frequencies in the 700 MHz band that they acquired in 2008 in an auction. I'm not saying they are doing away with 700 MHz altogether, but they are giving up channels in the 700 MHz band. Hopefully the hand off between their "AWS" and LTE network (aws just being the license name of the frequencies) will be more seamless than the hand off from 3g to LTE. Otherwise we will have 3g, LTE, and "AWS" that our phones will search for and need to jump between. Every time you enter a building you'll drop AWS, try to get LTE, may or may not get LTE, then drop to 3g...
Anyone know if our phone is capable of doing this? Verizon just rolled it out in Seattle (where I'm at) and my friend on his Note 3 had to go into his "Service Mode" and enable it manually but is getting 78megs down and 26 megs up (first test in a congested area). Here's a link to the article he had to read in order to enable it: http://forums.androidcentral.com/ve...enable-band-4-aws-sm-n900v-requires-root.html
After doing some searching it looks like we're SOL. Can anyone confirm? It's been a while since the last post in this thread so I am assuming things may have changed since this last post.