Movistar has followed Vodafone Spain in announcing the commercial launch of LTE-A services in Madrid and Barcelona in October, with more cities to come, reported Telecompaper.com on Sept 4, 2014. Telefonica Espana CEO Luis Gilperez Miguel revealed the operator’s plans during his intervention at the XXVIII telecommunications and digital economy meeting in Santander. On Monday, Vodafone Spain’s CEO Antonio Coimbra said his company would begin offering LTE-A services in four Spanish cities – Madrid, Barcelona, Seville and Valencia – from next month. The LTE-A technology would enable Movistar to offer top download speeds of 300 Mbps, double the 150 Mbps available under a standard LTE network.

Movistar also said that the deployment of its traditional 4G network was continuing apace, with the operator hoping to increase its 4G coverage to all towns with over 5,000 inhabitants by the end of next year, and to all localities with over 1,000 inhabitants by the end of 2016.