Vodafone Germany aims to cover 30m people with 5G in 2021

Vodafone Germany’s 5G network coverage has been rapidly expanding in the past year – so much so that they are now announcing fresh targets for the coming financial year.

 

Previously, Vodafone Germany had said that it would target 5G coverage of 20 million people by the end of 2021. Now, the company has announced that their rollout is, in fact, ahead of schedule, reporting that they have already exceeded this target by 5 million. 

 

As a result, the company now has now issued a new target of 30 million people covered by the end of the year.

 

This rapid acceleration in coverage comes as part of what Vodafone has termed its ongoing ‘network offensive’, which has seen the company switch on more than 10,000 5G antennas over 3,000 locations.

 

In the twelve months leading up to March 2022, Vodafone Germany said that it had planned 7,000 additional mobile upgrade and expansion projects, around 3,000 of which will involve the activation of 9,000 5G antennas.

 

Some of these projects will also involve the further rollout of standalone 5G, though the specifics of these plans have not been revealed. 

 

Vodafone Germany activated its 5G standalone network for commercial use at the end of last month, upgrading 1,000 sites to support the new technology. In doing so, it became the first operator to offer standalone 5G services in Europe.

 

In addition to its 5G developments, Vodafone also noted that it was refarming 3G spectrum for LTE, with goals of deploying 18,000 additional LTE base stations. The company announced earlier this month that it would be shutting down its 3G network from the end of June, noting that its 4G coverage reaches 98.6% of German homes and accounts for only around 5% of their total mobile traffic.

 

“In the new financial year we will build additional stations where there are still annoying dead spots. We are switching off 3G to free up even more space for LTE. And we are the first provider in Germany to turn 5G into a commercial real-time network in more and more places – completely independent of the existing LTE infrastructure,” said Vodafone Deutschland CEO Hannes Ametsreiter.