Vodafone Turkey achieves record 942Mbps in ‘4.5G’ speed tests

Vodafone’s Turkish unit has announced a record speed of 942Mbps in tests utilising LTE-suitable spectrum won in the August 2015 auction. Claiming a first for the country, the operator has applied 256-QAM (quadrature amplitude modulation) technology to frequencies aggregated across four bands – 800MHz, 1800MHz, 2100MHz and 2600MHz. Vodafone Turkey expects to launch commercial ‘4.5G’ technology on 1 April 2016.

As noted in TeleGeography’s GlobalComms Database, Turkey’s three incumbent mobile network operators (MNOs), British-owned Vodafone plus Turkish-owned Turkcell and Avea (Turk Telekom), each won 4G spectrum in the 26 August 2015 tender held by the Information and Communication Technologies Authority (BTK). Vodafone paid a total of USD869 million for spectrum in the 800MHz (2×10MHz), 900MHz (2×1.4MHz), 1800MHz (2×10MHz) and 2600MHz (2×15MHz) bands, valid for 14 years.