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Comment by AdmiralAsshat | Hacker News Reader

No Verizon support. :(

How is that still a thing? I can’t think of a phone here in Europe that you can’t just put a SIM card from any carrier in and it will work.

From Fairphone's US order page

> Critical Notice: The device does not support LTE Band 13 (Verizon's primary coverage frequency).

Presumably that frequency isn't used in Europe? It also says that it's "not certified for use on the Verizon Wireless network." I don't know if that means Verizon might block it (which sounds like a very US thing) or it's related to not supporting the frequency that Verizon uses for LTE.

Because the United States sucks in regards to mobile phone compatibility and spectrum allocation. https://share.gemini.google/u6E8mAiITMcJ

What is that link?

The evolution of low effort copy+paste LLM response. Now Google can track everyone who wants that information and people can be just as rude as before when they copy+pasted LLM responses into conversations, but now it's sly.

That's been true for much of the history of cellular networks, as far as I know - universal standards in Europe, US phones can't (always) be moved between service providers. It used to be even worse in the US, with phones locked to individual carriers regardless of technology.

That's some of the European over-regulation that everyone complains about, compared to unfettered American competition.

Interesting, the tech specs page said Verizon was supported but the carrier coverage page says it isn’t

Why use Verizon directly? It's insanely overpriced. US mobile and others provide better prices, service, features, security, and customer service. If it doesn't work on their towers, US mobile allows you to switch to at&t and t mobile towers.

Yeah, that’s a bummer. But I’m seriously thinking about switching to AT&T over this, but I would need to know if the frequencies are covered as good on AT&T.

I can’t believe how few choices we have in cell phones in the United States. Where is all the innovation I keep hearing everyone talk about?

Innovation in the US is mainly how many more creative ways they can suck money out of consumers.

> I can’t believe how few choices we have in cell phones in the United States. Where is all the innovation I keep hearing everyone talk about?

The beginning of your sentence - "I can’t believe how few choices we have..." - can be applied equally sadly to other areas here in the U.S....such as but not limited to lack of choice of residential ISPs, or lack of choice (or generally mis-incentivized) healthcare providers, or lack of choice of mobile service providers, or, etc., or etc. And, of course, your last part of your comment asking where the innovation is? Well, innovation often is pocketed in those who control the capital, and only released little by little at the whims of releasing more capital. Sorry, i have to step away, cuz felt sad instantly just citing my own comments here. :-(

How are you going to innovate installing hundreds of thousands of cell towers across the USA?

Mobile network via satellite might increase number of network providers by 1 or 2, but the physics problem of needing tons of physical assets to create a wireless network usable by small, low powered devices remains.

I guess you could innovate some new physics that allows you to send wireless signals through more surfaces, that is also not ionizing radiation to animal and plant tissue, and doesn’t need a lot of power to send from a mobile device. That is a lot to ask, though.

Cell towers in the United States are primarily owned by three major companies: American Tower, Crown Castle, and SBA Communications. These companies build, acquire, and lease space on the towers to wireless providers.

No more infrastructure needs to be built.

When you say lease space to wireless providers, what do the carriers do with that leased space? Do you think that could be called infrastructure needed for that carrier’s coverage?

Also, there are enough dead zones that satellite direct to cell is a thing.

What are you talking about? There are hundreds of different cell phones available for sale in the US.

Hundreds might be pushing it.

If you as a user want a modern, high end or top of the line cell phone, you're pretty much just stuck with Apple or Samsung. Maybe Google. If you remove the minor variants each has that's just 3.

We used to have many more - OnePlus obviously, Honor, Huawei, LeEco, HTC, LG, ASUS, Essential, Blackberry, etc.

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