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The most powerful telephony operators are putting the batteries with 4G coverage, and in recent months they are giving a strong push to cover most of the Spanish territory with this network, to finally be able to turn off 3G in a few years.
But smartphone users not only use our phones in the middle of the street, but many of us take advantage of the trip to work in the morning to catch up on current events through the digital editions of newspapers, or simply, to comment on the latest macabre chapter of Game of Thrones in the family WhatsApp group.
And since the metro is one of the places where we use the telephone the most (except when coverage does not allow it), Orange will bring 4G to all metro lines in cities that have this means, and will do so before the end of year. The Madrid and Barcelona subways will be the first to have this coverage, and before the summer arrives they will have the service available thanks to the 83 stations deployed in the Capital and the 92 in Barcelona. In both cases, the 4G network implementation work began a year ago and will complete the process in a few weeks, although the operator has stated that it has not been easy due to the large number of lines and stations.
The next step will be Valencia and Seville, whose deployment is still in its initial phase, although Orange states that before the end of the year, metro users in these cities will have full 4G coverage. While the suburban Bilbao and Malaga have already had this service for a few months.
Bet on 4G in the short term
The French company began spring with the figure of 5.7 million 4G clients and a coverage that, according to the multinational, reaches 87% of the population of Spain, a total of 1,300 municipalities, including all populations with more than 10,000 inhabitants.
According to Orange, the work put into the fourth generation network has allowed it to gain 2% of customers in the first quarter of the year compared to the same period of 2015. In addition, from the orange operator it is stated that 60% of the traffic that produced in its mobile network is carried out on 4G technology, unlike the 22% implementation that the multinational had exactly a year ago.
At this time, all the efforts of the telephone operators are focused on leading the growth in 4G technology. In fact, today we have learned about the launch of the Guaranteed 4G Network by Vodafone, an initiative of the British company that seeks to compensate those Spanish customers who do not enjoy this network 100%, and for this it gives 1 GB to users who not happy with the service. It is a way to offer a guarantee in its fourth generation network while seeking leadership for which it fights alongside Orange and Movistar.
