Vodafone Idea Testing LTE 3 CA in Kolkata

Vodafone Idea, the merged entity is never been a talk of the town for its LTE footprints. Vodafone is considered as best metro coverage on 2G and 3G and Idea is good in rural areas, but when it comes to 4G - these operators never became a frontrunner. They wait, watch and implement.

However as Jio is ruling in the country with extensive 4G coverage of 98.8% and Vodafone and Idea stands at a distant 84.6% and 82.8%, the merged entity is now gearing up to shorten the coverage gap.

It's been heard from Vodafone Idea that they are strengthening their LTE network by adding more sites, small cells, massive MIMO and carrier aggregation.

It's really interesting to see Vodafone Idea is following Airtel's steps to refarm 900MHz or may be 2100MHz to add a new carrier to its existing LTE deployment of 2CA. It's now 3CA. And I don't know what is the third carrier on Vodafone Idea's LTE network.


Earlier :

Vodafone in Kolkata using 2500MHz and 1800MHz for its LTE network.

Now: Vodafone in Kolkata is showing that it's on LTE 3x CA.

It is expected that Vodafone in Kolkata using 20MHz of 2500MHz band, 10MHz of 1800MHz, and another 10MHz of unknown band (900/2100MHz). Though the last screenshot showing its LTE2500 is using just 10MHz spectrum, and the second screenshot showing 10MHz of 1800MHz is used by Vodafone Idea.

In Kolkata Vodafone does not seem to be using Idea's network.However as I visited Vizag very recently on roaming Vodafone is sharing its network with Idea.