A4NoOb said:
ViRGE said:
It makes perfect sense from a technological standpoint.
For 3G systems virtually everyone else in the world besides North America uses GSM exclusively (NA is mixed GSM and CDMA), so if Sony is only to produce a single Vita then they need to use GSM, reducing their choices to AT&T and T-Mobile. From that, only AT&T uses frequency bands compatible with most of the world. The bands T-Mobile uses are at a higher frequency and fairly unique, so supporting them normally requires a different radio that works on T-Mobile's bands and loses support for several AT&T/world bands in the process.
This is almost exactly what Apple did with the iPhone for years. They produced a single world GSM model which only worked in 3G mode on AT&T (and unofficially worked in 2G mode on T-Mobile). Bringing on Verizon this year required that they produce a new iPhone specifically for that market. I can't imagine Sony wants to take the risk of producing what amounts to an American-only Vita given that they'd sell far fewer Vitas than Apple sells iPhones.
So while it's possible there was some kind of bidding war among carriers, I believe that they're using AT&T because they're the de-facto GSM 3G carrier. Perhaps in 3-4 years when LTE is widely deployed and cheap enough to integrate, Sony can upgrade the Vita to LTE and by extension add support for additional carriers.
Why would it be so hard to design the PSVita with multi-band frequencies? We already have this with a lot of android phones, and the technology isn't difficult to implement. From a technological standpoint it would make more sense for PSV to leave an "unlocked" system for people on various different carriers to join. It's the same legitimate reason why people were deterred away from the iPhone.
If you actually look at those Android phones, virtually none of them work on both T-Mobile and AT&T's 3G frequencies. On paper it's possible, in practice it drives up the cost of the device and requires a really complex antenna to make it all work.
T-Mobile is the smallest of the 4 carriers anyhow, both in subscriber numbers and in area covered. When people talk about wanting devices to support more carriers, they really mean they want a CDMA device for use with Verizon.