Right, the Gemalto modem is designed and made in Germany, it will be placed on an M.2 card in the USA.
Cheers
nicole
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I think it was a very wise decision to use a M.2 card because finding the “right” modem is a moving target. With the roll-out of 5G we may see changes also in the use of bands for 3G and 4G as operators revise their maps.
this is in sydney - measurement apparatus goes only up to 3.5GHz according to the spec sheet 
We can assume that Gemalto is more credible than BroadMobi - quality control , etc.
But, since it lacks a few LTE bands for major US carriers, most of us needed alternative. Thank you for getting it !
Now, @nicole.faerber is this BroadMobi BM818 (US) fully certified for US carriers? What about VoLTE?
I pre ordered the phone long ago, but need to know if I’m making a right decision on modem.
Thanks
The BM818-E1 bands are a strict superset of the PSL8-E, apart from 1 UMTS band, which is irrelevant, since all countries where the variant is useful use Band 1 only, which is supported by both.
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I’ve tried to match the Modems and Canadian providers.
Feel free to look it over and tell me if I’ve made any mistakes.
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It matters because of the choice of which countries you want to be surveilling you. Let’s say you are in the US. If you want China and the US to be surveilling you, choose the BM. If you want the EU and the US to be surveilling you, choose the PLS. 
All use of the cellular network is intrinsically insecure, and can be surveilled at various points (the cellular modem being just one of them). If you want security then use the cellular network to access the internet and layer your voice (and other) communications on top of an end-to-end encrypted protocol.
There is also a potential issue with tariffs if the trade war escalates (but that is really just “price” - see next).
So choose the cellular modem based on other criteria e.g. supported LTE bands, speed, price.
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Certifications are claimed here. http://www.broadmobi.com/en/module_show.php?id=18 Whether that is enough detail for you I don’t know.
Freedom Mobile uses Band 13:
Source: https://www.freedommobile.ca/en-CA/network-and-coverage/coverage
The addition of Band 13 LTE (700MHZ low-band spectrum) to our network means we can strengthen and expand our coverage to even more places.
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Apparently their website won’t let the VPN traffic in
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You are correct. I’ve updated my image above. Thanks!
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I’m pretty sure wcdma is the underlying tech for UMTS (GSM 3G) the competing tech know as cdma is actually cdma2000. So i think all your providers are fully supported with the PLS8-US and BM818 on 3g.
So as fara as i can see you will only miss out on LTE B7. B8, B13, B29 and B66 seam to be edge cases for individual providers any ways.
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I believe you’re correct. A quick search shows they are the same. I’ll update the image again. Thanks!!
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And i don’t know anything about canadian providers but here in germany the provider are going to fade out 3g the next 2 years and gonna reuse the frequencies for LTE and 5g.
So it might be of interest to lock which frequencies are used for 3g know and which LTE band could be used on the later an chekc them also. I See the 850 Band for example. Its used by many for 3g but only Telus uses it for LTE but this could probably change on the other providers.
The lower frequencies are also of more interest i expect as they have longer ranges per cell, and you have a lot of countryside.
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Consider the updates to the page https://puri.sm/faq/supported-networks/ where they say they are considering two variants of BM818. For example, they are considering BM818-A1 which supports other bands not supported by the BM818 such as Band 13
| Gemalto PLS8 | BroadMobi BM818 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Standard | Frequency/Band | PLS8-E | PLS8-US | BM818-E1 | BM818-A1 |
| GSM/GPRS/EDGE | GSM 850MHz | X | X | X | |
| EGSM 900MHz | X | X | X | ||
| DCS 1800MHz | X | X | X | ||
| PCS 1900MHz | X | X | X | ||
| HSPA+/WCDMA | B1 2100MHz | X | X | ||
| B2 1900MHz | X | X | X | ||
| B3 1800MHz | X | ||||
| B4 1700MHz | X | X | |||
| B5 850MHz | X | X | X | ||
| B8 900MHz | X | X | |||
| LTE-FDD | B1 2100MHz | X | X | ||
| B2 1900MHz | X | X | X | ||
| B3 1800MHz | X | X | X | ||
| B4 1700MHz | X | X | |||
| B5 850MHz | X | X | X | ||
| B7 2600MHz | X | X | |||
| B8 900MHz | X | X | |||
| B12 700MHz | X | ||||
| B13 700MHz | X | ||||
| B17 700MHz | X | X | |||
| B20 800MHz | X | X | |||
| B25 1900MHz | X | ||||
| B26 850MHz | X | ||||
| B66 1700MHz | X | ||||
| TDD-LTE | B38 2600MHz | X | |||
| B40 2300MHz | X | ||||
| B41 2500MHz | X | X |
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If I can untangle all the indirect references, the only AT&T band the US modem is missing is B30.
BM818-E1 has really broad support. Based on that it seems like a great upgrade from PLS8-E. Is there another difference between the two like speed or something?
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There is a good comparison in the second post of this topic. See above. The BM is faster, as it happens.
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Option 2: Broadmobi BM818 (made in China)
IMHO,
when it comes to a sensistive component such as the modem :
made in China = designed by Chinese
representing disrespect to our privacy and data security -
which is what Purism is trying to avoid
and the reason why we willingly give up the advantages of Android
and pay dearly to become Purism backers
Quote from BM818 operation_manual
https://fccid.io/2AON8-BM818/User-Manual/BM818-Coperation-manual-V1-4-4107101
“Copyright notice :
All right reserved : Shanghai broad Mobi Communication Technology Co Ltd
… and it is protected by Chinese law…”
Am i wrong ?
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I gotta say Im not at all happy about having to use a chinese modem myself. The Gemalto did not support my bands so I guess im stuck with it for now . Hopefully someone will find some obscure electronics manufacturer US based or atleast not chinese that will be compatible down the road. I’ve been looking for an alternative myself.
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