This will be great but things should work the moment they connect in US. All you will need to do (i guess) would be to activate the SIM beforehand and claim the electron after it gets connected.
Yes that works. You can consider doing particle update using the latest CLI as well, depending on which system firmware you are developing with.
Yes, if the same band is available in the country in Asia?
I will find the electron model vs country table and update this post again.
I understand that Particle Electron 3G (Asian Version) is suitable for frequencies: 900/1800/2100 MHz. I came to know that 2100MHz is available in US, does it mean Electron Asian version works in US ? (See below image for US Carrier frequencies)
Similarly, Electron US version works with frequencies of 850 & 1900MHz, there is 1900MHz 3G frequency in Asia, but the US version of the Electron (that I have) doesn’t seem to connect to the wireless network (and therefore I am unable to claim the device before I ship it).
Can someone please shed some light on my understanding as to why they don’t connect inspite of the frequencies being available ?
The Americas/Australia (U260) and Europe/Asia/Africa (U270) can not be used in the other location. Both the 3G and 2G bands are different. The U260 uses 850/1900 MHz and the U270 uses 900/2100 MHz for 3G. The 2G Electron (G350) is quad-band GSM (850/900/1800/1900) so it works everywhere there is still 2G coverage. But even though the 3G Electrons can fall back to 2G, they’re only dual-band 2G so the U260 falls back to 850/1900 and the U270 falls back to 900/1800 for 2G.
You cannot use the 3G Americas U260 in Italy, or most locations in Europe, Asia, and Africa, for that matter.
You can swap the Particle SIM card between Electrons, but the U260 radio modem doesn’t operate on the frequencies that are used in Europe. You’ll be stuck in blinking green forever.
Correct. The U260 and U270 are basically identical except for the frequency of the cellular modem so switching rarely causes problems. You can also load system and user firmware on an out-of-area Electron over USB, though you can’t claim it until it comes online in its supported region.
Before shipping, also check if the electron that you are shipping to the US has the correct system firmware version. New electrons generally come with an old firmware loaded on them.
Doing OTA updates for system firmware could be problematic sometimes.