Duetshe Telekom (DT) unveiled its commercial LTE network in Cologne, Germany, on Wednesday following the installation of 100 base stations by Deutsche Telekom (DT). This deployment comes 12 months after DT was successful in bidding for LTE spectrum.
The company confirmed that it plans to launch LTE in other German cities, and plans to expand the service to Berlin, Frankfurt, Hamburg and Munich. DT said around 100 cities across the country will have LTE coverage by the end of this year.
According to a statement, the Cologne LTE network will use the 1.8GHz band, with the base stations being supported by over 120km of new fibre optic cabling in the Cologne metropolitan area. Commenting to Teltraif.de, DT CTO Bruno Jacobfeuerborn warned that customers should not expect to see access speeds of 100Mbps, as is theoretically possible, but around 10Mbps or slightly higher.
As with most LTE networks deployed to date, the first device available to customers will be a a USB modem that provides support for 2G, HSPA and LTE. DT said that tariffs will be made available July costing €74.95 per month for users in Cologne, increasing to €89.95 for 50GB of downloaded data per month in cities other than Cologne when DT expands LTE this autumn. Both offers give users a free, three-month introductory period.
This plan to rapidly deploy LTE across 100 German cities will likely trigger a response from its main rival Vodafone, which has so far kept ahead of DT in the LTE rollout stakes.
For more:
- see this The Local article
- see this Teltarif.de article (translated via Google Translate)
- see this Portel.de article (translated via Google Translate)
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