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I asked on Travel a week ago about getting a temporary phone for a trip to Europe but my requirements have changed. Now I need a phone that works in Europe and the USA.

I got to looking at the LG G3 Beat, which is listed as a world phone, using the wireless bands GSM 850/900/1800/1900 MHz. But while I was shopping, I noticed that many retailers do not include Verizon on the list of carriers that the phone will work with, even though Verizon has 850 and 1900 MHz GSM spectrum. Some even explicitly say that the phone will not work with Verizon, because -- according to them -- Verizon is a CDMA network.

My attempt at researching has turned up a lot of posts from 4-8 years ago saying that Verizon was, at the time, in the process of switching from CDMA to GSM. I didn't find any definitive "the transition is complete" announcement, but the best I can tell, it seemed like GSM was fully rolled out as of 2014 1, with CDMA still being kept around purely for legacy support until 2021. (Please correct me if I'm wrong about any of this.)

Are the retailers mistaken about the phone not working with Verizon, or am I not understanding something about how networks work, or is the phone incompatible for a different reason?

1 Verizon plans to drop CDMA from phones in 2014 in favor of pure LTE

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