Vodafone Italy and Huawei say they are testing decoupling technology to improve the coverage range of future 5G networks. The firms are trialling uplink and downlink decoupling, which utilises a lower frequency range for the uplink connection and a higher range for the downlink. Vodafone says that the initiative has improved the uplink signal intensity by a factor of ten, while extending the coverage radius of the antennae.
Separately, Vodafone has introduced 550Mbps 4G LTE-A services in Naples, adding to its previous launches in Florence, Palermo, Milan, Verona, Turin and Bologna. Rome and Genoa are due to be covered by March 2018, the cellco says.