Is Vodafone Looking at a Mass LTE Deployment in Germany?

With the announcement that Vodafone Germany will work in cooperation with Huawei to test LTE in the digital dividend bands (790-862MHz), wha is interesting is that Vodafone may be planning to deploy LTE in rural areas.

Is has been suggested by many operators, that LTE will initially only be deployed in high density urban areas or hotspots to help ease conjestion. The test that will be carried out by Vodafone and Huawei will be to assess the ability of LTE to provide wireless broadband coverage to rural and urban areas. The test will also look to prove LTE's compatibility with adjacent technologies such as digital TV and digital radio.

This announcement suggests that Vodafone is potentially looking to deploy LTE on a much larger scale if the test results are positive.