Spanish mobile operator Vodafone Spain has unveiled a range of improvements for its mobile customers, including a new range of handsets, an upgraded mobile self-service tool and a revamped music services product. Most notable, however, is the cellco’s revelation that it doubled the capacity of its mobile broadband network in major cities, while expanding its footprint in rural regions.
Vodafone said it has deployed Dual Carrier-HSPA+ (DC-HSPA+) technology in the seven largest cities of the country – Madrid, Barcelona, Sevilla, Zaragoza, Bilbao, Valencia and Malaga – increasing theoretical download speeds to up to 43.2Mbps. The deployment of the new technology, the cellco said, had increased the average download speed of customers in the aforementioned cities by 30%. It also noted that in Spain’s 32 largest cities it now offers theoretical downlink speeds of up to 14.4Mbps (actual speeds of up to 10.8Mbps) via its mobile broadband network, while in those cities there were ‘extensive’ areas where it has rolled out HSPA+ technology, boosting theoretical download speeds to up to 21.8Mbps (16.2Mbps actual).
Alongside the DC-HSPA+ rollout, Vodafone also revealed that it has extended 2.5G EDGE technology to 1,230 towns with less than 1,000 inhabitants, while also noting that the network in these areas would be updated with 3G technology once the government had approved refarming of spectrum in the 900MHz band. Looking forward Vodafone also said that it expects to further expand EDGE coverage to some 2,700 municipalities by end-2012.