Spark has announced that it has activated 4.5G technology in Queenstown, which is situated in Otago on New Zealand’s South Island, switching on five mobile towers in the area. Queenstown Central Business District (CBD), Frankton and Arrowtown, and some areas in between are covered by the new network, the telco notes. The launch of 4.5G in Queenstown follows single-tower deployments covering limited areas in the Christchurch CBD and Silverdale, Auckland last year, but Spark claims that this is the first time the technology has been activated on a cluster of towers to deliver the improved capability to a wider geographic region. Going forward, ten more towns are set to be activated with 4.5G within the next twelve months, alongside Spark’s ongoing 4G upgrade and deployment programme.
Spark claims that real-world testing in Queenstown has been delivering download transmission speeds of over 400Mbps, while the use of specialised equipment saw trials reach a peak speed of 1.15Gbps in Christchurch last year. The new network utilises tri-band carrier aggregation (3C) across the 700MHz, 2300MHz and 2600MHz bands.