Will my phone work in USA?

What if you are travelling to a foreign country and you need to know if your phone will work there? The answer is simple. There are two things to check:

1. GSM frequencies for making telephone calls  (some phones use CDMA,these are not dealt with here)

2. Data service frequencies for accessing the Internet.

There are two GSM frequency groups:

1. 900 and 1800 Mega Hertz (MHz)

2. 850 and 1900MHz.

Most of the world is in the first category except USA. See the map.

The next question is: Now that I have found that USA uses 850 and 1900MHz for making telephone calls, can my phone use these frequencies?

As an example, take the LG Optimus L3 E400. What are the GSM frequencies of this phone? You can get these details from the http://www.gsmarena.com/ website. If you search for LG E400, you will get the following page.

For this phone, the key frequencies are:

2G Network GSM 850 / 900 / 1800 / 1900
3G Network HSDPA 900 / 2100

This data says that your phone can use both the 850/1900 and 900/1800 bands for GSM and 2G Internet (EDGE)

Therefore, LG E400 will work in the USA for phone calls and 2G Internet.

What about 3G and 4G?

The phone has 3G capability on 900 and 2100 MHz but no 4G capability. In the USA, 3G is offered on 850/1900 and 1700/2100 bands. As long at the service provider uses 2100MHz for 3G services, you will be able to get 3G services also.