With the N900 already delayed why not make changes to support WCDMA on 850 and or 1900 mhz? I would understand the marketing decision to only support 3G on T-Mobile frequencies if T-Mobile was supporting the phone. By not having WCDMA on 850 or 1900 the vast majority of the US land area will not have 3G coverage on the N900. If you really want this phone to succeed in the US I feel that you need to support AT&T's network.

Why, the iPhones don't bog down the network enough, we need to add actual "mobile computers" to the mix?

Jay,

I assume your comment was intended as a joke.

You may live in Chicago where the T-Mobile network has good coverage and provides 3G. But many Americans live in rural areas where T-Mobile has no coverage at all. I do not like AT&T, if I could switch I would. The only networks that have significant rural coverage in the US are AT&T and Verizon. The N900 is not going to work on Verizon so AT&T + T-Mobile seems like the best option. Quad band WCDMA would likely increase the number of N900s sold which would also increase the number of apps ported to Maemo.

because this is only step 4 of a five step plan. t-mobile in the US has been kind of the go-to guy for experimental phones. Just like the G1 went to t-mobile first, now there are android phones going to every network in the US, although I highly doubt Nokia will make a high level phone with CDMA, but who knows, they say they are coming after the US market hard now

AT&T is not the only 3G network in North America using the 850MHz band. In Canada Rogers has a great network (and two other carriers are setting up a competing network) that has lots of bandwidth and great speed.

I really really wish Nokia would announce a version of this device with 850MHz 3G. I'm really looking at purchasing one of these but would be severely displeased if afterward a new model was announced with 850MHz 3G.

I'm OK with waiting, just please don't make me sad to have purchased one. I'd rather wait longer to get a better end result! (Ideally a quad-band 3G model would be released!)

It's not that cheap to tailor a custom hardware version for just the US market that uses it's own weird bands.

The only real question is why can't we make universal phones!

It has been pointed out that many of the frequencies not present in the n900 are used outside of the US.

The real question is actually why bands are allowed to be fractured and auctioned to virtual monopolies.

Here are the UK specs for the N97 Mini with

"Quad band EGSM 850/900/1800/1900
WCDMA 850/900/1900/2100
Automatic switching between GSM bands"

http://shop.nokia.co.uk/nokia-uk/pro...&culture=en-GB

If the same radio had been used then there would not be any need to offer a custom version for US and Canadian networks.