This first such agreement between the major players will deliver greater spectral efficiency and speed, as well as keep costs down
Telefónica, Vodafone and Masorange have reached a milestone agreement to improve 5G rural coverage by sharing their collective 30MHz in the 700MHz band. This frequency is best suited to wide coverage from a single antenna and indoor coverage.
This is according to the Spanish newspaper Expansión [subscription needed]. Their intention is to make network deployment more efficient and less costly. It is also a reflection of the recent and ongoing shifts in the Spanish market.
Masorange is the merger of MasMovil and Orange, while Vodafone is in the throes of exiting the market, selling its business and assets to Zegona Capital.
The newspaper article notes that agreements to share resources are common in offering services across fibre infrastructure. Sharing has been agreed previously in mobile, but never by the three main players.
The three will act on this agreement in areas covered by the government’s Unique Active Networks (Unico Redes Activas) programme, backed by the European Union. It subsidises the high cost of rolling out coverage to populations of 10,000 or fewer.
The operator that rolls out the network within such an area can exploit the spectrum of all three players to guarantee throughput of at least 100Mbps, as stipulated by the government. The maximum speed, in theory, from combing the spectrum is 450Mbps.