Vodafone CZ

Company Overview

Vodafone CZ is the smallest of the three major mobile carriers operating in Czech Republic. The company was founded in 1982 as Český Mobil and following the government releasing a third GSM carrier licence in 1999 the company launched mobile services under the Oskar brand name in early 2000. The brand continued until 2005 when the company was wholly acquired by Vodafone Group, and subsequently rebranded to Vodafone CZ.

The company provides 2G GSM services over the 900 and 1800 MHz bands, and launched 3G UMTS over B1 (2100 MHz) in March 2009 which it upgraded to HSPA+ in October 2011, following with DC-HSPA+ in October 2012.

4G LTE initially was launched in December 2013 over the B8 (900 MHz) band as a temporary means of achieving national coverage. B3 (1800 MHz) (20 MHz width) rollout commenced concurrently, followed by B20 (800 MHz) in June 2014. LTE-A 2C aggregation was launched in September 2014, aggregating B3 with B20 to provide 225 Mbps. The company added a 10 MHz B1 (2100 MHz) service in November 2014 to later achieve 300 Mbps peak DL rates using LTE-A 3C aggregation of B1, B3, and B20.

With the implementation of its national B20 (800 MHz) network, Vodafone CZ has been slowly deactivating its B8 (900 MHz) network.

April 2016 saw the introduction of early LTE-A Pro technologies, with 4X4 MIMO successfully implemented in Karlin and Prague and the company advertising peak rates of 375 Mbps.

Further trials in November 2016 of LTE-Advanced Pro technology enabled by 4C CA (B1, B3, B7, and B20) with 256QAM and 4x4 MIMO achieved 1.2 Gbps DL data rates.

In May 2017 Vodafone Czech Republic claimed a national first with its deployment of NB-IoT technology on its commercial mobile network over its B20 (800 MHz network).