Vodafone brings LTE to more rural areas

Vodafone Germany has announced it has deployed Long Term Evolution (LTE) technology in nine locations in the federal states of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, Lower Saxony, North Rhine-Westphalia and Bavaria. Over 20 LTE base stations have been deployed in so-called ‘whitespots’ – areas where no broadband access of any kind is currently available – in the five states. The UK-based operator plans to cover more underserved areas in all states by the second half of November, and expects to be able to offer LTE-enabled devices the following month, enabling residents of the coverage areas access to the high speed internet service. As previously reported by CommsUpdate, Vodafone first launched LTE services in the German seaside resort of Heiligendamm in September 2010. The operator plans to cover around 1,500 communities by the 4G mobile broadband network by the end of March 2011. Vodafone has selected Huawei and Ericsson as technology partners and eventually plans to upgrade all base station sites in Germany to LTE.