Vodafone customers in Adelaide are set to get better 4G coverage from today — especially indoors — with the company deploying its new 850Mhz spectrum in the city and surrounding suburbs.
The switch-on follows news in July that Vodafone was “re-farming” its existing spectrum holdings, opening up the low-frequency 850MHz spectrum band in a bid to broaden 4G coverage to reach 95 percent of the country’s metropolitan population by the end of 2014.
Vodafone promised “high-quality indoor mobile coverage” and “superfast data speeds” with the spectrum, which complements its existing 1,800MHz spectrum band and is already compatible with the “majority” of 4G-enabled devices.
Speaking about the rollout of improved 4G coverage in Adelaide, Vodafone Chief Technical Officer Benoit Hanssen said customers with “4G 850MHz-capable smartphones and tablets” would see an improvement.
“Customers will immediately notice the difference right across Adelaide and its outer suburbs following a mass-switch on of new 4G coverage today,” said Mr Hanssen.
“The type of spectrum we’ve used to roll this out is known as low-band, which means it works better indoors, including homes, businesses, shopping malls and car parks.
“We’ve tested all the major smartphones to see how they perform on our new 4G network, including the popular iPhone 5 and 6 models and Samsung Galaxy. What it means for customers is that they’ll notice the 4G symbol on their phone more often, meaning they have faster download speeds.”