Are the 4G modem specs final ? (France: My operator uses 700/1800/2600)

[benoitb]

Pretty much my plan since I'm sharing the same operator as OP.

Just so you know, there's actually politics reasons behind these bands. The operator only use the bands it is allowed to.
Politics wanted to show that they were open to have a 4th operator in France for PR relationship, but the other operators have succesfully lobbied against the creation of that 4th operator hence the odd bands. Th goal was to make that 4th operator a failure... which it is not far from it

Real reason I learnt from people involved in the frequency attribution process is that allocation for the LTE 700 band was rushed to allow a quick cash grab during Hollande's presidency.
I expect LTE on 700 will become a reality in other European countries as well, France is just early on this one.
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The current provider I use for my phone don't have any 2G masts - they used to share them with a competitor, but now they've got enough 3G and 4G masts to give coverage, they've dropped 2G entirely. My old 3G phone is able to make calls and send and receive texts, so I assume they've got that working over 3G these days.

As far as I know, GSM is only available on 900MHz and 1800Mhz.

GSM(2G), WCDMA(3G) are capable of circuit switching. LTE(4G) is packet switching only. The first generations of LTE phones (before introduction of VoLTE) had to fallback to 3G (or 2G) to establish a voice call. My LG G2 works that way, the Pyra's modem will also work that way if you try a voice call.

Modern devices on networks where VoLTE is deployed can have voice calls on LTE, using packet switching.

As the Pyra is still not out but using already aging components, the modem is already outdated for French mobile networks. So it's your decision to choose the modem version (that will still work on 3G most probably at least) or to use a phone as a router.

 

[Swordfish II]

EMS is build on top of SMS, it just adds a layer of abstraction. If you send a longer EMS it really sends two SMS, phones that support it simply concatenate them, receiving two SMS on an older phone is not some kind of fallback provided by the provider. The strict limitation of the amount of characters actually has technical reasons and is not just something someone made up to charge more.

IIRC the character limit was due to SMS transiting on the cell carrier signal. Pretty interesting since SMS weren't by design, an enterprising network engineer simply figured out he could do that and look at them now.

 

[rygD]

SMS is long dead. Still everyone is calling it SMS.
In an SMS you can only sent those 160 characters.
Nowadays we're using EMS (Enhanced Messaging Service). That's what allows you to send those "long SMS".
Provider still charge one "SMS" per 160 characters.

You can see this when using a very old phone (Nokia Brick). I had one and when someone did send me a EMS with more than 160 characters I received multiple SMS because my Phone was not capable of EMS.

EMS is build on top of SMS, it just adds a layer of abstraction. If you send a longer EMS it really sends two SMS, phones that support it simply concatenate them, receiving two SMS on an older phone is not some kind of fallback provided by the provider. The strict limitation of the amount of characters actually has technical reasons and is not just something someone made up to charge more.

BTW: If you include one of those unicode smileys in your message you only have 70 characters, because they force the phone to use UTF-16, using a minimum of 2 bytes per character. Surprisingly this isn't even problematic for my old Nokia brick, it just has no symbol for those smileys. The standard encoding uses only 7 bits, the actual limit is 140 bytes.

IIRC the character limit was due to SMS transiting on the cell carrier signal. Pretty interesting since SMS weren't by design, an enterprising network engineer simply figured out he could do that and look at them now.

When I receive (and probably send) long messages they get broken up. I am using a Photon Q/Ting combination. For smileys I still stick to the classics. ; )
Sounds right that a network engineer found a way to add functionality and make everything better, and everyone is still making use (and money off) of it long after they forgot about that person.

 

[sebt3]

Real reason I learnt from people involved in the frequency attribution process is that allocation for the LTE 700 band was rushed to allow a quick cash grab during Hollande's presidency.
I expect LTE on 700 will become a reality in other European countries as well, France is just early on this one.

Ho interesting. That explain why it was the economic minister that was central in this affair...