T-Mobile Czech Republic has reported the expansion of its LTE-Advanced (LTE-A) technology to 58 additional towns and cities with a combined population of 350,000, doubling their maximum available download speeds from 75Mbps to 150Mbps, whilst it adds in a press release that its total number of LTE-A base stations should reach nearly 1,000 by the end of this year. The new zones are in the regions of Domazlice, Jindrichuv Hradec, Klatovy, Pisek, Plzen, Pribram, Rakovnik, Rokycany, Strakonice and Tabor.
The base stations in the districts listed above use carrier aggregation in the 800MHz and 2100MHz bands (10MHz bandwidth in each), enabling download/upload speeds of 150Mbps/50Mbps. Handsets supporting the aggregation of these bands currently include the Samsung Galaxy S7 and Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge; the range of suitable devices will increase in the near future.
T-Mobile was the first operator in the Czech Republic to launch commercial LTE-A in July 2014 by aggregating the 800MHz and 1800MHz bands, and later making the technology available for half of Prague’s population, whilst increasing the maximum download and upload speeds to 225Mbps and 50Mbps, respectively. The 800MHz/1800MHz LTE-A technology is currently supported by 16 handsets.
In December 2015, the operator combined three bands – 800MHz, 1800MHz and 2100MHz – in two locations, thus increasing the maximum speed in its network to 375Mbps.