Faster LTE: Vodafone now uses 3G frequencies for 4G after being switched off

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The 3G shutdown initiated on June 30th of this year also resulted in a reallocation of frequencies to LTE at Vodafone. The network operator has now almost completed this process and can thus offer a third higher bandwidth with higher speeds for downlink and uplink with LTE.

Vodafone's 3G network has been offline since July 7th

Vodafone started the 3G shutdown on the night of June 30th to July 1st and completed this process by July 7th. This was followed by the reallocation of the last frequencies used for 3G at 2,100 MHz to LTE. After three frequency blocks of two times 5 MHz each for LTE had been used since February of this year, the shutdown freed up another 5 MHz for downlink and uplink, which can now also be used for LTE once the reallocation has been completed. A total of 20 MHz is available for downlink and uplink in the 2.100 MHz frequency range, effectively a third more than half a year ago.

The column on the far right shows the future LTE network (Image: Vodafone)

Vodafone indicates significant increases in the speed in the LTE network. According to the first measurements, an increase of 15 to 20 percent is mentioned. With its Red tariffs, Vodafone advertises up to 500 Mbit/s in the downlink and up to 100 Mbit/s in the uplink, with 5G even higher speeds of up to 1 Gbit/s are possible, with 5G standalone currently up to 700 Mbit/s, which is to be expanded in the coming months via carrier aggregation. The uplink should double with 5G SA.

Better LTE when there is a lot going on

Vodafone names concrete gains for Regensburg with over 27 percent, Hildesheim with 26 percent and Munich with 24 percent. In cities such as Augsburg, Braunschweig, Erfurt, Fürth, Ingolstadt, Oldenburg and Würzburg, the company was able to increase the speeds in the LTE network by over 20 percent. In Hanover, Heilbronn, Frankfurt or Berlin, the average is a little more than 10 percent. There are noticeable improvements especially at peak times, when a particularly large number of customers are on the Internet.

Vodafone declares the reallocation of the 3G frequencies to be almost complete seven weeks after the shutdown. Final “cleanup work” is still to be done, including the dismantling of older antennas and the replacement of control elements at some cell phone sites. In the case of individual stations that were previously only equipped with 3G, the first LTE equipment would also be imminent.

Feedback from business and private customers

The network operator also provides customers with experience of how the 3G shutdown was carried out. The shutdown was preceded by the first non-public tests in Suhl in Thuringia and in the public network in Mainz, Wiesbaden and Chemnitz at the beginning of the year, so that initial experiences and feedback were already available.

Vodafone has mainly received feedback from business customers, although they had offered “intensive support” in advance. “We expected that there would still be a problem at one point or another. However, we were able to resolve most of the service issues quickly in a partnership-based exchange, ”said Guido Weissbrich, network manager at Vodafone, today. Some smartphones would have needed a software update, others an activation on the network side. “So we had to turn one or the other adjusting screw, but on the whole the 3G shutdown went smoothly.”

Can use LTE you can also make phone calls

In the case of private customers, the lack of settings in particular led to inquiries. The LTE function and thus also telephoning via LTE (VoLTE) were often simply deactivated. Most of the customers concerned did not know that LTE can also be used for telephony with better voice quality.

ComputerBase received information about this article from Vodafone under NDA. The only requirement was the earliest possible publication time.