Telecom Italia Mobile (TIM) has expanded its Long Term Evolution-Advanced (LTE-A) network to a further 60 cities, thus increasing coverage of the high speed 4G service to a total of 120 cities across the country. Earlier this month the company launched Italy’s first commercial services in 60 cities, including Rome, Milan, Turin, Naples, Florence, Genoa, Palermo and Bari. TIM claims the upgraded networks offer peak download rates of up to 180Mbps using carrier aggregation (CA) technology, which improves performance by combining two frequency channels. Existing 4G subscribers can access LTE-A services at no extra cost until 30 April 2015; at present TIM offers two LTE-A compatible devices – the Samsung Galaxy Note 4 and the Samsung ALPHA – but the firm plans to widen its device portfolio in the coming weeks.
