The Basic Knowledge of your BlackBerry Bold

If you got your BlackBerry Bold from AT&T, chances are that your BlackBerry Bold will continue to work when you travel to, say, London or Beijing. All you need to worry about is remembering to turn on your BlackBerry Bold (and maybe the extra roaming charges).


Because your BlackBerry Bold is quad band, it works in more than 90 countries. What is quad band? Basically, different cellphone networks in different countries operate on different frequencies. For example, the United States and Canada operate on 850 and 1900 MHz, and Europe and Asia Pacific operate on 900 and 1800 MHz.


Your quad-band BlackBerry Bold is designed to work on 850 MHz, 900 MHz, 1800 MHz, and 1900 MHz, so you’re covered almost wherever you go. Check with your network service provider to see whether your BlackBerry Bold will work at your destination before you hop on a plane, just to be sure.


Nothing stands still in this world, and this saying is proven by the fact that Global System for Mobile Communication (GSM) has spawned High Speed Downlink Packet Access (HSDPA), which are technologies that have been growing because they work on the same GSM phone infrastructure. This HSDPA is now available in the United States through most major network service providers. HSDPA competes in the marketplace against Code Division Multiple Access’s (CDMA) EvDo.


What’s all this alphabet soup mean to you? CDMA and GSM aren’t compatible. Your phone works on only one technology. When you travel outside North America, you face the burning question: CDMA or GSM?


Your BlackBerry Bold runs on GSM, so you should be okay to travel outside the United States. Most non–North American countries are on GSM networks. If you’re a CDMA kind of person, you might have some “issues,” as they say. When in doubt, talk to your network service provider.