UMTS on 900MHz

Nortel, Qualcomm and Orange in France demonstrated UMTS/HSDPA calls in the 900 MHz band. Especially for rural areas it is much more cost effective to use lower frequencies. Right now in rural areas you only get GPRS/EDGE coverage. With UMTS/HSDPA on 900MHz we might see a more than tenfold increse in mobile data throughput even outside of densely populated areas. Naturally we need new handsets and/or datacards to make use of these "new" frequencies.