Question: Why are some phones not available in the United States and Canada?
Answer:
It is a technology issue. Around the beginning of the 1990's, when North-American cellular companies began introducing digital cellular service, they decided to choose various technologies: CDMA, TDMA and GSM. But Europe and most other regions of the globe had already settled on a unique technology: GSM. Plus, North Americans also decided to use a different frequency. While the european GSM works on 900 and 1800 Mhz frequency bands, North-American GSM works on 1900 Mhz. The result of that, of course, is that North-America is apart from the rest of the world and phones designed for the European market simply don't work here.
Since the GSM market on 900 and 1800 Mhz bands is much larger than the small North-American market, there are many more phones available in the European market. However, a growing number of cell phones are &global phones& because they are compatible with all 3 frequencies: Europe's 900 and 1800 bands and North-America's 1900 band.