Vodafone do not have the best reputation in the Australian mobile industry, but they are working really hard at improving the quality of their service. Although they’re a bit behind the competition – Telstra began the rollout of their 4G network over 12 months ago, and Optus switched theirs on midway through last year – Vodafone’s new 4G network looks pretty promising. Vodafone have announced today that they will commence the rollout of their LTE network in June in the major cities around Australia. The rollout will start with the major cities – Melbourne, Sydney, Perth, Brisbane and Adelaide, but Vodafone also plan to offer the service in Woolongong, Newcastle and the Gold Coast as well. Typical speeds are said to be between 2 and 40Mbps, which is 15 times faster than the average speed of Vodafone’s 3G network, but speed tests have been able to download at over 60Mbps in Vodafone’s head office.
No plan pricing has been announced as yet, but it’s unlikely that Vodafone will impose a surcharge for using their LTE network, as neither Telstra nor Optus currently do so, and customers interested in a new LTE-compatible HTC One or Samsung Galaxy S 4 are likely to go elsewhere if they’re just going to have to cough up more money in a couple of months’ time.
Is there anyone left on Vodafone ?
Sadly, I am. I made the horrible, horrible mistake of signing up to a 24-month contract. Thankfully, it’s up next month 🙂
I am, mainly for their 365 day prepaid plan. Maybe I should look for a Telstra reseller that has good prepaid plans.
once the network gets more congested, then it will slow down significantly. it’ll be good to see how their coverage map looks like with 4g.
It’s a joke it’s taken so long compared to the competition. Do we know what areas of the CBD will be covered specifically?
and does it run on the same frequency as the rest of LTE in australia?
Not quite sure of the extent of the suburban penetration yet. The network runs on 1800MHz frequency, which I believe is the same as Telstra and Optus.
Probably same 4G range as Optus…
I wonder how long before it comes out here to Bathurst…
66 down / 26 up with the network all to themselves obviously, still cool though 🙂
Yeah, I’d like to see how well it does in my office in Melbourne’s CBD. Their 3G network can grind to a halt at times, so here’s hoping they’ve improved their capacity.
On a side note too, they were able to hit 150Mbps in lab testing, so at least the 60Mbps is using real infrastructure.