Fairphone v2 outside Europe?

Greetings Fairphone community!

As a long time fan of the Fairphone, I thought now might be a good time to say hi and ask a favor: don’t forget about those of us who live outside the EU :smile:

For my own selfish reasons, I’d love to see the 2nd Fairphone version be supported in the US, but I’m sure there are many others like me all around the world. Please remember us as you plan and design version 2!

Joe

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Quote from a recent blog post:

the issue that FairPhone will need to face is for example in the U.S. the cost of FCC Certification. FCC Certification in the U.S. is per phone, per network, per firmware revision.

to make that clear: the exact same phone with the exact same revision of the OS, if sold via Verizon, requires a $USD 50,000 FCC Certification check. if that exact same phone is sold via AT&T, with the exact same OS as is sold via Verizon, it requires another $USD 50,000 cash set of fees to the FCC. if there is a change to the firmware - even a single line of code recompiled - the device must be recertified for every single network. and it’s cash. up-front.

every single mobile phone company in the world, except for Motorola, therefore completely avoids the U.S. as its first market, because the CE mark can be obtained and recognised world-wide (except for the U.S.). the only company that goes to market first is Motorola, and that’s because they wrote, maintain and execute the FCC Certifications for mobile phones on behalf of the FCC.

however for the rest of the world - where WCDMA and GSM is supported (WCDMA is what HSDPA - your fast 3G - goes over) - there should be no major financial certification barriers to distribution.