Germany is fast becoming the European flagship for LTE roll-out, and both Deutsche Telekom and O2 have made breakthroughs this week.

The incumbent has gone live with its commercial LTE service, starting in the city of Cologne, where it has deployed about 100 base stations. The next cities to gain 4G offerings will be Berlin, Frankfurt, Hamburg and Munich and the target is to offer LTE in at least some zones in about 100 cities by the end of the year.

Deutsche Telekom, like O2 and Vodafone, gained 2.6GHz and 800MHz spectrum in last year\'s auction, the first to sell digital dividend licenses in a major European economy. The fourth player, E-Plus, also got 2.6GHz frequencies, but missed out on the lower band, which comes with stringent rural broadband coverage conditions. However, for the Cologne network, DT is using its existing 1.8GHz GSM band, backed up by 120 kilometers of new fiber across the metro area for backhaul.

CTO Bruno Jacobfeuerborn said download speeds should average about 10Mbps and as with most new 4G launches, the service is kicking off with dongles rather than handsets. The modem supports GSM, HSPA and LTE and tariffs will be a special €74.95 a month, with a 50Gbytes monthly cap, for the Cologne launchpad, but will increase to €89.95 for subsequent cities. Both offers give users a free, three-month introductory period.

Vodafone already launched some commercial LTE at the turn of the year, but has initially focused on rural areas, while DT has also turned on its first 800MHz services. Now O2 is following suit with its first services in the 800MHz band. It has been running trials in the areas surrounding Munich and will go live with residential and small business propositions in the Black Forest and Saxony-Anhalt regions.

The brand will be \'O2 LTE für Zuhause\' (at Home), and users will be offered download speeds of up to 7.2Mbps for €39.90 a month, with a 10Gbytes limit for residential and 12Gbytes for SMB customers (discounted to €29.90 for the first six months). Speeds will be throttled to 384Kbps if these data caps are exceeded.

"With O2 LTE für Zuhause rural areas will finally have fast Internet access as well," René Schuster, CEO of Telefónica O2 Germany, said in a statement. "Video streaming, fast downloads and online computer games are no longer an issue in rural areas." O2 is using kit from Huawei.