Vodacom hits 270Mbps with 4G

Vodacom has performed a live demonstration of Long Term Evolution (LTE) Advanced technology on its cellular network at the Dome in Vodacom World, Midrand on 23 September 2014.

While operators around the world have taken to calling LTE and other technologies 4G, the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) has told MyBroadband that it only considers IMT-Advanced technologies “4G”.

IMT-Advanced includes LTE Advanced, but not LTE.

Speaking to journalists at the demonstration, executive head for Vodacom’s engineering team Graham Cusack said that the LTE Advanced service is offered on Vodacom’s actual network. It is not just a laboratory demonstration, Cusack said.

The Vodacom LTE Advanced network uses carrier aggregation, two 20 Megahertz (MHz) channels in the highly sought-after 2,600MHz band.

“We applied for temporary spectrum, we got it yesterday, and this morning at 04:30 4G was live on the Vodacom network,” said Vodacom CTO Andries Delport.

Some high-end handsets already support the technology, including the upcoming Samsung Galaxy Note 4. Vodacom performed a number of Ookla speed tests on a Huawei Ascend Mate, and managed to achieve a download speed of 269.94Mbps and an upload speed of 39.90Mbps.

The Ookla speed test shown below was performed on a Samsung Galaxy Note 4 smartphone.