UK's telecom regulator Ofcom has released the outcome of the principal stage of its 4G, 5G spectrum auction. EE, Telefónica, Vodafone came out as big winners. Ofcom has been running an auction of spectrum in two frequency bands: 2.3 GHz, which is usable by current 4G mobile and 3.4 GHz, which is one of the spectrum bands earmarked for 5G.

Vodafone is trialing 5G  in partnership with Huawei and has achieved the first 5G data connection in Italy. The test utilized a radio base station using Massive MIMO technology. During the test, download speeds of more than 2.7 Gigabits per second were observed, with a latency of just over a millisecond.

Vodafone Egypt has selected Ericsson as its Network Function Virtualization partner and has gone live with the commercial virtual network function. Since October 2016, Ericsson's virtual Serving GPRS Support Node - Mobility Management Entity (SGSN-MME) has been serving and managing commercial mobile broadband traffic on the Vodafone Egypt network.

Huawei and Vodafone have completed a 5G mmWave field test at Vodafone Emerald House in Newbury, UK.

A 5G testbed in the Dutch province of North Groningen was officially launched today, when an international agreement was signed between the ten partner organisations who initiated the project.

Ericsson, with Vodafone and Qualcomm, today conducted live testing of advanced LTE Carrier Aggregation (CA) of LTE in licensed and unlicensed bands on a commercial mobile network.

Vodafone Italy, a fully-owned subsidiary of the Vodafone Group plc, has selected Nokia Networks to introduce commercial Voice over LTE (VoLTE) services on its network.

Alcatel-Lucent  and Vodafone are conducting the first European field trial of TWDM-PON ultra-broadband access technology as the operator prepares its network to address growing network data traffic and mobile backhaul demands.

Vodafone is implementing LTE FDD/TDD carrier aggregation in commercial network in Portugal, anticipating wider terminal availability later this year. This move will allow the operator to combine the best characteristics of LTE FDD and TDD modes. 

Ofcom has published research into 4G and 3G mobile broadband performance. Overall, 4G networks performed much better than 3G networks in five sample towns and cities tested - Edinburgh, Leeds, London, Newcastle and Poole/Bournemouth - where both 4G and 3G networks have been rolled out.

Vodafone Italia has extended its 4G network to provide LTE, LTE-Advanced services in over 100 winter resorts. The list of municipalities that benefit from the 4G connection includes Courmayeur, Cortina, Corvara, Ortisei, Pinzolo and Madonna di Campiglio.

Vodafone Ireland has introduced 4G+ technology with data speeds of up to 150Mbps in Ireland. Vodafone customers in Waterford city will have 4G+ access from 1st December, while Cork, Dublin and Limerick cities will be switched on by the end of December.

Vodafone Australia has launched 4G+ (LTE Advanced) network across Melbourne.