A simple printed monopole slot antenna for penta‐band wireless wide area network operation (824–960/1710–2170 MHz) in the mobile handset is presented.The monopole slot has a length of 50 mm only and is embedded close to the bottom edge of the system ground plane of the handset with a small distance of 11 mm. By adding a small‐size C‐shaped strip connected orthogonal to the bottom edge of the system ground plane, good excitation of the monopole slot antenna at its fundamental (0.25 wavelength) and higher‐order resonant modes can be obtained. The excited resonant modes form two wide operating bands to cover the GSM850/900 operation (824–960 MHz) and GSM1800/1900/UMTS operation (1710–2170 MHz). Detailed operating principle and radiation characteristics including the specific absorption rate results of the proposed monopole slot antenna are described. Measured results of the fabricated antenna are also presented. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Microwave Opt Technol Lett 53:1399–1404, 2011; View this article online at wileyonlinelibrary.com. DOI 10.1002/mop.26017