Yes, the post titles are getting a bit long these days. Sorry about that. In this part, let’s have a look which 4G LTE and 5G NR bands for 5G Non-Standalone (NSA, ENDC) another nationwide US network requests my mobile devices to report and how this differs from the network I had a look at in the previous post.
US network number 2 requests the following frequency bands:
LTE: 66, 13, 5, 4, 2, 10
NR: n5, n77, n260
Like in the first network, the band list sent by the network contains a number of surprises. On the LTE side, the list looks similar to the list of the first network. A major exception is band 13, which is just 10 MHz wide, and assigned to this particular operator. According to Wikipedia, band 10 is a little bit outdated and a subset of band 66. Bands 66, 2 and 4 were requested by the first network in the previous post as well, so no real surprise here. This leaves band 5 (850 MHz) as a band that I didn’t see before.
On the 5G side, the requested bands are significantly different. Band n77 is the 3.5 GHz band, and probably the network operator’s main 5G band. It looks like this carrier doesn’t only use band 5 for LTE but also for 5G. And then there is band n260, which is mmWave spectrum at 39 GHz.
On my slightly ‘outdated’ 2 year old mobiles sold in the EU, most of the bands are also well supported. On the LTE side, everything except band 10 is included. On the NR side, n5 and n77 are supported. Band n260 requires it’s own radio frontend and is not supported. No surprise here.
So in general, also for network 2, there is good LTE / 5G ENDC support by my European devices.