GSM generations

Britain operates on a GSM network , so if you’re coming from Europe and many other countries, your current mobile will probably work in the UK either as a roaming service or using a UK SIM card.

Australian networks use the GSM standard . This is the same as most other countries, although some places like the US and Japan also rely on CDMA. If you have a CDMA-only phone you will not be able to access 3G networks in Australia, which means no talk and text.

Vodafone operates a GSM (2G) mobile phone network at 900 MHz and 1800 MHz , a UMTS (3G) network at 900 MHz and 2100 MHz, and a 4G LTE network at 700 MHz, 1800 MHz, 2100 MHz and 2600 MHz.

And all the Mexico carriers use 2G GSM 850/1900mhz and 3G UMTS AWS/850/1900Mhz .

Between GSM and CDMA, GSM — and, by extension, its descendants 5G New Radio (NR), UMTS and LTE — is more popular. GSM-based technologies are deployed in practically every country in the world . CDMA, by contrast, is currently used in less than 10 countries.

The CDMA/GSM split ended, in theory, as carriers all switched to LTE, a single, global 4G standard, starting in 2010 . But the difference remained because phones still needed to access the older 2G and 3G networks, primarily for voice calls.

GSM (Groupe Special Mobile) – Global System for Mobile communications – most popular standard for mobile phones in the world. GSM 900 / GSM 1800 MHz are used in most parts of the world: Europe, Asia, Australia, Middle East, Africa .