ANKARA: Vodafone Turkey launched what it calls the first live commercial trial of GSM/LTE (GL) spectrum sharing on its network in the city of Diyarbakir, on the banks of the Tigris River in the South East of Turkey. Algorithms developed by Huawei were used to enable greater flexibility in the way that blocks of 900 MHz spectrum could carry both 4G (LTE) and 2G (GSM) traffic.
GL spectrum sharing enabled an approximately 58 percent increase in average downlink user throughput and a 44 percent average increase in uplink user throughput compared with a standard 5 MHz block of LTE bandwidth, the company said in a press release. Vodafone Turkey wants to use more effectively its spectrum resources to handle increasing 4G/LTE data traffic. Vodafone Turkey launched 4.5G services on 1 April, 2016. The company said it now has the country’s broadest 4.5G coverage.