Vodafone swaps spectrum to consolidate 1800MHz holdings for LTE rollout

Stuart Corner
Tuesday, 20 September 2011 17:42

IT Industry - Strategy

Vodafone has done a spectrum swap with state rail authorities in New South Wales, Victoria and South Australia to consolidate its 1800MHz spectrum into contiguous blocks in preparation for launching LTE services.

LTE can operate in spectrum blocks from 1MHz to 20MHz but in smaller blocks is only marginally more efficient than HSPA. However its efficiency (as measured in bits per hertz) increases significantly with larger blocks of contiguous spectrum.

The spectrum swap gives Vodafone 15MHz of contiguous spectrum in Brisbane, Melbourne, Perth and Sydney and 12.5MHz in Adelaide. (In each city it holds 15MHz or 12.5MHz for transmit, paired with the same bandwidth at a different frequency for receiving.)

CEO Nigel Dews said: "We have now organised our spectrum into contiguous blocks in mainland capital cities that will support the roll out of LTE in all capital cities, once mass market handsets and mobile broadband devices are available at mass market prices."

Vodafone is replacing its entire network that presently operates at 900 and 2100MHz with Huawei gear and at the same time adding the ability to operate at 850MHz. It says that this infrastructure is also ready for operation of LTE at 1800MHz.

The company said: "We will switch on LTE services when it makes sense to from a commercial perspective, and this is also dependent on handset availability and the market environment. We undertook successful LTE trials in the 1800MHz band with Huawei, near Newcastle NSW, at the end of 2010. The results achieved download speeds of up to 73Mbps, paving the way for the evolution to higher data speeds for our customers when the time is right."

Telstra's LTE service also operates at 180MHz but when it announced plans for the service in February 2010 it was very much a pioneer. Since then support for LTE at 1800MHz has grown rapidly.

Earlier this month the GSA issued its latest LTE status report saying that popularity of this band was growing with five commercial networks in operation and a dozen more planned. GSA president, Alan Hadden, said: "Growing industry acceptance of the benefits of deploying LTE in 1800MHz spectrum, which is increasingly supported by regulators and policy makers, confirm 1800MHz as a core band for LTE globally."