This is the oldest GSM phone sold in the US. The large brick phones of the 80's were out here but they were all analog and later TDMA. GSM came later and this was a launch phone on Pacific Bell Wireless .... This company used 1900Mhz and serviced all of California and part of Nevada. (The same region as Pacific Bell Telephone, our land line telephone company.)

That company became part of Cingular and then now AT&T. The original network is still around but is now run by T-Mobile USA. For a while Cingular and T-Mobile shared the network here in Los Angeles and AT&T had a seperate GSM network. When Cingular bought AT&T, Cingular users could use either network. The AT&T network used both 850Mhz and 1900Mhz, so there was better coverage indoors than the old 1900Mhz network.

BUT, the 1900Mhz was older and very well developed -- so it generally had good coverage and performance. The the new AT&T network had growing pains....

But now, the AT&T network is used by Cingular (and now AT&T again) customers exclusively. They have fixed the major problems with it and along with Verizon, it's the only other 850Mhz network in town. This is great as it works in elevators and deeper inside buildings than do other 1900Mhz networks.

This old Pac Bell phone still works with my SIM card and on the 1900Mhz AT&T network. There is only a small slice of 1900Mhz left on AT&T so I bet it would suck using this phone. The HSDPA network sits on 1900Mhz and uses most of it.

Also, just using this phone with its two line screen just sucks in general too! Looking through the phonebook is ridiculous. It shows one name per screen.

But I still love having this old phone and use it occasionally to freak people out. Sound quality is great on this phone. Reception (on the old 1900Mhz network) was great. It has a pullout antenna -- something you never see anymore.

Also, when you turn it on, it makes that familiar Motorola BEEP sound. :-)