MTN Ghana might start 4G LTE Band 3 services

A cell tower configured all mobile phones to switch to Band 3 when necessary.

This part of Band 3 can be linked to a part of Tigo 2G that carried traffic (AirtelTigo relies on Airtel's Band 3 spectrum instead).

It is small and doesn't do much by itself. Theoretical download speeds are up to 37Mbps or 50Mbps or 100Mbps, depending what the tower has and what the mobile phone has. Upload speeds are up to ~19Mbps or lower.

If a tower is upgraded with Carrier Aggregation(CA_3A-7A-20A), 4x4 MIMO (2/3), and 256QAM (3/3), mobile phones that also have all of these will get download speeds of up to 650Mbps. However, the theoretical speed is only between a tower and a mobile phone, a speed cap such as 200Mbps may be used (but it's not necessarily enforced), or the backhaul may be insufficient.

1Mbps = 125 KB/s.

Band 3 is sometimes called DCS, 1800, or L18 (if it's 4G).

Here's the message that configures mobile phones to switch to Band 3 when necessary. These take effect after approximately 5 seconds of inactivity. Don't count on it, it may have been added by mistake.

BCCH-DL-SCH-Message

  message: c1 (0)

    c1: systemInformation (0)

      systemInformation

        criticalExtensions: systemInformation-r8 (0)

          systemInformation-r8

            sib-TypeAndInfo: 1 item

              Item 0

                sib-TypeAndInfo item: sib5 (3)

                  sib5

                    interFreqCarrierFreqList: 3 items

                      Item 0

                        InterFreqCarrierFreqInfo

                          dl-CarrierFreq: 6375

                          q-RxLevMin: -128dBm (-64)

                          t-ReselectionEUTRA: 1s

                          threshX-High: 22dB (11)

                          threshX-Low: 40dB (20)

                          allowedMeasBandwidth: mbw75 (4)

                          .... ...0 presenceAntennaPort1: False

                          cellReselectionPriority: 6

                          neighCellConfig: No MBSFN subframes are present in all neighbour cells (1)

                      Item 1

                        InterFreqCarrierFreqInfo

                          dl-CarrierFreq: 1625

                          q-RxLevMin: -128dBm (-64)

                          t-ReselectionEUTRA: 1s

                          threshX-High: 8dB (4)

                          threshX-Low: 22dB (11)

                          allowedMeasBandwidth: mbw25 (2)

                          ..0. .... presenceAntennaPort1: False

                          cellReselectionPriority: 5

                          neighCellConfig: No MBSFN subframes are present in all neighbour cells (1)

                      Item 2

                        InterFreqCarrierFreqInfo

                          dl-CarrierFreq: 3075

                          q-RxLevMin: -128dBm (-64)

                          t-ReselectionEUTRA: 1s

                          threshX-High: 8dB (4)

                          threshX-Low: 22dB (11)

                          allowedMeasBandwidth: mbw25 (2)

                          .... .0.. presenceAntennaPort1: False

                          cellReselectionPriority: 5

                          neighCellConfig: No MBSFN subframes are present in all neighbour cells (1)