Good blog posting about who has and who hasn’t bandwidth & spectrum amongst the US Mobile phone networks:

http://blogs.gnome.org/dcbw/2007/11/05/t-mo-got-no-spec-trum/

The US has 6 bands that are or will be used for cellular communications:

• 700MHz – the new band, to be auctioned in February next year. There “open access” rules tied to about 1/3rd of the spectrum to stop carrier locks on devices.
• 800MHz SMR – where Nextel operates; Nextel bought up taxi dispatch operators nationwide and converted them over to iDEN back when only 2 cellular licenses were available in each market.
• 850MHz – the original cellular band, initially AMPS but now being converted over to GSM and CDMA
• 1900MHz – the PCS band, digital from the start and where Sprint and Voicestream (now T-Mobile) entered the cellular industry. All the major players have spectrum here.
• 1700MHz – the AWS bands auctioned last year for broadband data like HSPA and EVDO
• 2500MHz – the “educational” band in which both Sprint and Clearwire have vast holdings and will deploy nationwide WiMAX networks over the next two years

And it looks like my mobile phone carrier has the least bandwidt, for now, as they’re a later entry in the US market