Vodafone Germany has named Huawei and Ericsson as a technology partner for LTE development.

Vodafone will begin in upgrades in late September and expects to have 1500 LTE base stations by next year. In rural area, Vodafone plans to provide 3 Mbit per second from day one while expects significantly higher speeds in cities.

In Germany's mobile spectrum auction this year, Vodafone Group emerged as winner alongwith Deutsche Telekom AG (DT) and Telefonica SA's (TEF) O2. Vodafone secured two 10 megahertz blocks in the 800 MHz band and paid EUR1.42 billion for a total of 12 spectrum blocks.

"Mobile Internet is becoming a real fixed line alternative," said Friedrich Joussen, CEO of Vodafone Germany.

Huawei has been testing LTE with Vodafone Germany over the so-called "Digital Dividend Band" (790-862MHz). Last year Vodafone Germany and Huawei had signed of a MoU to conduct a joint test gauging the performance of LTE in the Digital Dividend Band.