Bouygues Telecom has become the latest operator in Europe to deploy LTE-Advanced.
France’s third largest operator is aggregating frequency bands to launch LTE-A in a tranche of cities across France, and promised to make it available at no extra cost to its customers.
LTE-A is now available in Lyon, Grenoble, Vanves, Issy-les-Moulineaux and Rosny-sous-Bois, and will be available in another 16 cities from September.
LTE-A compatible smartphones will be available the same month.
[Read more: LTE devices’ growth explodes, 1800MHz band dominates]
From the beginning of July the company’s enterprise customers will be able to buy LTE-A compatible hardware and Huawei’s 4G+ gateway, while retail customers will be offered the Bbox Nomad 4G+ hotspot.
Bouygues became the first French operator to obtain a speed of 182Mbps in October 2013, but said LTE-A would offer speeds of up to 220 Mbps.
Swisscom revealed earlier this week that it has rolled out an LTE-A network in two Swiss cities.
[Read more: Swisscom deploys LTE-A network]
Bouygues also announced it is improving its 4G network by widening the frequency band used at its 1800MHz sites from 10MHz to 15MHz.
The operator’s 4G network now covers 69 percent of the French population, or 43 million people.
According to a report from the Global mobile Suppliers Association last week, at least a fifth of the 300 plus operators deploying LTE networks around the world are also investing in LTE-A.
