4G on iPhone 5 in France: technically possible, but when?

4G, allowing greatly increased speeds
improved, is really beginning its deployment this year in France while
other countries are a little more advanced. But at the same time, as for
the iPad last year, thelatest iPhone model offered by Apple is not
unfortunately not compatible with the frequency bands purchased by us
national operators.

With one exception:Bouygues Telecom would like to reuse
frequencies allocated to Edge communication to adapt them to the
4G. The benefit is obvious,to be the first operator to
offer 4G on iPhone 5.

While the operator would have 51 antennas capable of transmitting in 4G
quickly, he wanted this to be possiblefrom this beginning
of year:

This request will be submitted to a decision by Arcep (authority of
regulation of Telecoms) which announced that itwill audition the four
mobile operators on February 7on this subject.

But we already know in part
what they should plead thanks to this article seen in Les echoesnamely
that it is urgent… to wait.

Thus, Orange and SFR want this reconversion of the bands
frequencies will not be authorized before mid-2014 while Free would like
this will not be the case before 2015.

The authority has 8 months to make a decision, we will follow this carefully and
In the meantime, you will have to go abroad to be able to enjoy an iPhone 5 and
of an iPad surfing in 4G.

Source

founder of the site. Computer engineer and Internet specialist where he has held various positions of responsibility, Laurent has been passionate about mobility since the arrival of "PDAs" in the 90s. Journalist for 4 years for the magazine Team Palmtops (Posse Presse) and author of several books on the iPad published by Pearson.