Vodafone Spain has revealed that its subscribers in Madrid, Barcelona and Valencia can now benefit from faster download speeds of up to 300Mbps thanks to the rollout of LTE-Advanced (LTE-A) technology in those locations, reports Telegeography.com on Oct 16, 2014. Looking ahead the cellco aims to extend LTE-A to a further five cities in December 2014, those being Seville, Bilbao, Malaga, Zaragoza and La Coruna. Meanwhile, the release of spectrum in the 800MHz band from January 2015 will enable Vodafone Spain to accelerate its deployment of the technology; the operator is currently using its 1800MHz and 2.6GHz spectrum for the LTE-A deployment, but from the start of next year it will finally be able to utilize digital dividend spectrum in the 800MHz band it won all the way back in June 2011.

Customers signed up to one of Vodafone Spain’s ‘Vodafone RED’, ‘Vodafone Smart’, ‘Vodafone Base S’ and ‘Mobile Internet’ plans in one of the covered cities will be able to take advantage of the increased speeds at no additional cost.

In announcing the LTE-A deployment milestone, Vodafone Spain noted that it 4G network currently reaches more than 767 municipalities, including 80 cities with more than 70,000 inhabitants, all provincial capitals, and the autonomous cities of Ceuta and Melilla. By the end of this year the operator aims to have 100% coverage of all cities in the country with more than 25,000 inhabitants.