Telefónica Deutschland is currently pushing the nationwide LTE expansion on a massive scale. In order to enhance its customers’ network experience, the company is constructing several new LTE stations in both urban and rural areas and increasing existing capacities. In the first half of 2018, the telecommunications provider already installed more than 3,000 additional LTE stations or upgraded existing LTE sites. This corresponds to approx. 120 LTE upgrades per week – at peak times even 200 per week. Thanks to this comprehensive network expansion, even more customers can browse the web at high speed in more and more places, stream videos smoothly, share their pictures with other people within seconds and make calls in the best HD voice quality thanks to voice telephony via LTE (Voice over LTE; VoLTE). “Whether in major German cities or in the countryside – we are currently driving the LTE expansion like no other company, so that our customers benefit from an improved and faster O₂ network,” says Cayetano Carbajo Martín, Member of the Board of Directors and Chief Technology Officer (CTO) of Telefónica Deutschland. “We will continue to push forward in the future and take extensive measures to expand the network in the interest of our customers.”

In the first half of 2018, Telefónica Deutschland significantly expanded the available LTE capacities in the O₂ network in densely populated areas. To this end, the company condensed the network with additional LTE elements in almost all cities in Germany – from Flensburg to Munich and from Mönchengladbach to Berlin – improving the network performance in places where the majority of customers live and work. The LTE expansion is happening at the same time as and in close conjunction with the network integration. In the course of this large-scale project, which is unique in Europe, several tens of thousands of mobile communications sites are being equipped with modern, more efficient technology.

In the first half of 2018, Telefónica Deutschland drove the LTE expansion not only in the cities but also across the countryside. In sparsely populated areas, where LTE had not yet been expanded, around 50,000 people per week were connected to LTE via the O₂ network in the first half of 2018. The new supply covers an area about eleven times as large as Berlin. In total, the company has connected additional communities in all 16 German states to the modern LTE network, for example between Schleswig and Flensburg (among others in Rendsburg, Hollingstedt, Schuby, Jübek), in the Eifel (among others at Nürburgring, in Simmerath, Schleiden, Kamberg, Rescheid, Schnorrenberg, Herresbach, Döttingen), in the Upper Palatinate and Lower Bavaria (among others in Hohenfels, Eichendorf, Arnstorf, Ortenburg, Grafenau, Riedenburg), in Havelland and the Pritzwalk region (Kümmernitztal, Gerdshagen, Könkendorf, Neu Krüssow), in East Frisia (Westerholt, Schweindorf, Tannenhausen) and in the Southern Black Forest (Simonswald, Schluchsee. In addition, Telefónica Deutschland has driven the expansion of LTE along important transport infrastructures such as motorways and railway lines. For example, the LTE supply along the ICE lines Hamburg – Flensburg, Nuremberg – Passau or Berlin – Braunschweig was improved further. In general, customers can use download speeds in the O₂ LTE network with up to 225 Mbps and upload speeds with meanwhile up to 75 Mbps (instead of 50 Mbps so far). Due to the progress of the LTE expansion, the average download rates of all customers with LTE Max tariffs increased significantly within the last months from 19 Mbps to 27 Mbps.

Telefónica Deutschland will consistently continue the expansion of LTE in densely populated areas and across the countryside in particular, so that an increasing number of customers will be able to browse the mobile web at high speed. The current alliances regarding the network expansion between politicians and network operators on the federal, state and municipal level – such as the declaration of intent at the national mobile communications summit or the signing of the mobile communications pact in North Rhine-Westphalia – directly benefit customers. While Telefónica Deutschland continues to drive the network expansion, the government wants to in return ensure that the conditions for the construction of new mobile locations are improved and that the available funds primarily go towards infrastructure and not towards licensing. With its extensive network measures, Telefónica Deutschland is not only creating a fully integrated, modern and more powerful O₂ network, on its way to becoming the “Mobile Customer & Digital Champion” the company is also laying the optimal foundation for future network technologies such as 5G.