Readers of this blog know that I talk about the United States’ mobile market quite a bit. It’s a funny market, to me, because we only have 4 major national carriers who control pretty much the entire industry. Sure, there are regional phone companies who service small parts of America, but the “Big 4” rule the roost, pretty much.

On the GSM front (the dominant cellular network globally speaking) only two of our carriers support this network technology: AT&T and T-Mobile USA. Adding to the frustration, these two carriers have different spectrums (radio frequencies) that they use, so a 3G phone on T-Mobile’s network won’t work on 3G over on AT&T. This is why I use have to use EDGE (a slow networking protocol) on T-Mobile with my Nokia phones. Up until the release of the N900, no Nokia smartphone supported T-Mobile’s 1700 mhz network here in the US.

Change Is On The Horizon

There might be a change in the air coming from Motorola. According to Engadget Mobile, Motorola ia working on a quadband HSPA chip that would make it possible to have a 3G smartphone work on all 3G GSM frequencies utilized by T-Mobile and AT&T!

This is great news for those who want to switch networks and take their phone with them…hopefully Motorola comes to market with this great chip that could change things for us mobile types!