Here’s a map showing the coverage enhancement NokiaSiemensNetworks says it is getting from an LTE base station operating in the 800MHz spectrum band.
The lighter colour is its 3G coverage in the German town of Kyritz at 2100MHZ, and the darker magenta shade is LTE coverage at 800MHz.
With NSN announcing today that Deutsche Telekom is launching LTE in the 800 band this year, this gives an idea of why operators like 800MHz for rural coverage.
Aside from coverage NSN was coy, at a recent London LTE demo and event, in sharing what it thinks LTE performance stats will be at 800MHz.
As you may remember, Vodafone Germany was happy recently to state that it expects 3Mbps actual throughput for a typical rural user at launch, using the same frequency. One of the compounding issues for operators in this band in Germany is that they have only 10Mhz each to play with, given there are three operators licensed within a 30MHz block.