T-Mobile’s acquisition of LTE Band 71 (600MHz network) last year made a lot of headlines, and rightly so, as it was aimed at filling gaps in the magenta carrier’s rural coverage. Last month, hot on heels of Samsung’s Galaxy S9 unveil, T-Mobile announced that the new flagships feature support for Band 71 on its network.

So far so good, but there’s one thing that left many confused – what about unlocked Galaxy S9/S9+ units? Will they be featuring Band 71 support if used on T-Mobile’s network? Well, we have the official answer to this, and it’s a big YES.

Not one, but we have two Samsung official sources confirming this. Take a look at screenshots below:

Here’s the link to the tweet in case you want to quickly take a look at the context in which it was made.

Someone owning an unlocked Galaxy S9 unit even confirmed the support by capturing a screenshot from their device showing Band 71 in the list of LTE bands supported by the handset.

So there you go, if you’ve been waiting for this confirmation before picking up an unlocked Galaxy S9/S9+, situation seems to be sorted out, right?

Do keep in mind that there’s a difference between featuring support for Band 71, and actually being able to use it. Why we are stressing this is because we didn’t come across any unlocked Galaxy S9 user who confirmed they are actually using Band 71 on their unit.

Galaxy S9 confusing Band 71 with Band 7?

We found a T-Mobile Galaxy S9 user raising this complaint on Twitter. Here’s what they were saying:

That’s indeed odd, right? (for those who aren’t in the know, none of the major US carriers use Band 7). So we asked for a couple of screenshots from the user, and they were humble enough to share them.

The screenshots – included below – clearly confirm the user’s device is a Galaxy S9 and their unit is hooking on to Band 7 instead of Band 71.

There’s currently no information on why is this happening. As you can see in the user’s first tweet, they never experienced this issue on their LG V30, which makes the problem Galaxy S9 specific. There’s currently no official word from T-Mobile or Samsung on this. We’ll update the story as an when more news-worthy information crops up.

PS: You can learn more about Band 71 here.

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