Azerbaijan operator Azercell Telecom said it has expanded the network coverage significantly to 85.3% of the population by end of March 2021, soared from 35.9% of January 1, 2019. Meanwhile, its geographical coverage surged to 72.8% during this period.
Last year alone, the geographical coverage of Azercell's LTE network was expanded by about 11%, both in terms of population and territory, said a press release from the mobile operator.
During the first quarter of 2021, 201 LTE Radio Base Stations were upgraded within the framework of the project, and LTE technology was added to 50 existing Radio Base Stations. Thus, the total number of the stations of the LTE network has reached 2742.
"Within the activities in this direction the LTE-Carrier Connection system is already available in 18 stations and tunnels of the Baku metro," the release said.
Incidentally, intensive works towards the expansion of new generation technology were carried out last year, the release pointed out. Thus, 784 new 4G Radio Base Stations were installed in 2020. Some of these stations were put into operation in the territories liberated from occupation as a result of the 44-day Patriotic War. Suffice to say that, 118 new LTE stations were launched only during September-December last year.
"The improvement of the 4G network and the increase in the number of Radio Base Stations have significantly affected the quality of services provided by Azercell and the speed of mobile internet. Looking through the volume of data traffic transmitted via LTE technology on the Azercell network over the past year, we can see that this figure has increased by 1.7 times. One of the important indicators is that about 71% of the total data traffic over the network is run through LTE technology," it said.
Currently, Azercell's 4G network provides download speeds of up to 240 Mbps and upload speeds of up to 95 Mbps.