KPN is nearing completion of its LTE network, but that's not to say everything's finished in terms of construction and investment. The Dutch operator announced that it has equipped 3,000 masts with LTE, covering 95 percent of the population. So that means it still has to cover the last 5 percent. While most of these people are in remote areas, the operator will also be able to benefit from LTE as a fixed-line replacement in those places. There's still more to do though:
- KPN is using 'low' spectrum for less dense areas and to penetrate buildings and 'high' frequencies for busy areas such as cities, where large capacity is needed. It's not yet clear whether all the mast are making use of the most suitable spectrum.
- In its most recent quarterly report, KPN also announced that its backhaul network is completed. It's using a mix of fibre-to-the-site and microwave.
- Subscribers currently enjoy sometimes very high speeds and low latency on the 4G network, but once the number of LTE devices increases, the user experience will deteriorate. The capacity of each site must be shared with multiple users. If speeds start dropping too much, KPN will undoubtedly choose to strengthen the network in certain locations. That can mean adding macro cells, but also small cells and Wi-Fi. This creates a heterogeneous network (HetNet).
- The 4G network is only handling data traffic for the moment, with a fallback to 2G or 3G for voice services. Voice over LTE (VoLTE) will have to be implemented at some point, and in the longer term, KPN will shut down the 2G and 3G networks to save on costs. This is likely not for some time yet, as KPN is still investing 2G and 3G.
- The operator is testing broadcast over the LTE network. If this proves successful, it will no doubt be implemented nationwide. While this demands network capacity, it's also an efficient way to deliver increasingly popular video content over LTE. It's still to be seen how KPN would deploy the technology (KPN has said it's not using LTE broadcast/multicast technology, standards under development by Ericsson and Alcatel-Lucent).
- The same as 2G (GPRS, EDGE) and 3G (HSPA), 4G will have further evolutions. The next step is LTE-Advanced, which uses carrier aggregation (bundling different frequency bands) to raise capacity and speeds. Speeds increase theoretically to hundreds of Mbps, depending on the type of spectrum used.
