Vodafone Germany promotes LTE as network starts to groan

Vodafone Germany's new advertising campaign is targeting residential consumers with the promise of access to its 21.6 Mbps LTE service. The €34.99 monthly tariff aims to persuade homeowners to ditch their fixed-line broadband services and migrate to Vodafone's LTE network.

However, early LTE subscribers are already voicing their concerns over the declining performance of Vodafone's LTE network, having seen their download speeds fall from around 20 Mbps last autumn to 5 Mbps in the early months of 2012. Some are now reporting speeds as low as 1 Mbps during peak evening hours, according to Teltarif.de.

A report from Dresden-based Maxwireless.de claim many new LTE subscribers have been added to the Vodafone network which has resulted in fall off in download speeds, regardless of new base stations being added.

Despite these worries, German operators continue to deploy their LTE networks, with Telefónica claiming that download speeds up to 100Mbps are achievable in city centres. The operator said that it plans to install LTE on 1800 MHz spectrum in 100 German cities and towns this year, according to Telecom Paper.

For more:
- see this Teltarif article (translated via Google Translate)
- see this Maxwireless.de article (translated via Google Translate)
- see this Telecom Paper article (sub. req.)

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