Thanks for the info, Profrink...
I'm an American living in Thailand, which sheepishly is only taking baby steps toward a national 3G network right now...
But there are some 3G services up and running, especially in Bangkok... Unfortunately, one of my mobile carriers for the short term is only offering its 3G on the 850 Mhz band, whereas my other carrier is only offering 3G on the 2100 Mhz band... And long-term, the national network, if and when it's implemented, is supposed to be on 2100 Mhz... So for me, getting a 3G phone that runs on 850 and 2100 Mhz 3G bands would be the best of all worlds...
The E72 already has that, in terms of covering all the 3G bands... But from what I've read, despite the nice feature set, the build quality and reliability of the E72 supposedly is nowhere near that of the E71, although the U.S. 3G versions of the E71 operate only on 850 and 1900 Mhz, which would be a bad long-term move for me. And I've read a lot of posts talking about the E72 having been manufactured in China, unlike the E71.... So, this is one of those instances where probably is makes more sense to look for the older model rather than the newer one.
PS - I went to the EBay Australia web site, and immediately found a bunch of E71s for sale, all advertising original Australian stock.. Great I figured... but then I looked and found they all said 900/2100 Mhz 3G.... So I'm assuming that means NZ typically runs on 850/2100, but Australia is different...