Both to save power and bandwidth.
No point CA-ing if the user is only using small amounts of data.
More space then for others.
When the demand is there it will kick in, hence the speedtest thing.
Depending on network set up you can have dynamic load balancing while CA is engaged. So the cell can effectively see-saw a handset's bias between say 2600 and 800 depending on carrier loading.
Without CA the cell can still move devices across frequencies as required so effectively dynamic thresholds.
So a totally swamped 2600 carrier could push devices down to 1800 to balance the load.
EDIT: In the case of EE there obviously but the same applies to all networks that have configured this.

If any of that is wrong ja will come along and Subtly call me an idiot without me even noticing...
Hahaha

This all seems far to technical for Vodafone Devon!

Woah! Where abouts was that?! I know the Vodafone Store on Market Street has it and I've managed 81 down 47 up there! And the other location is where EastZEast is but i remember registering poor speeds on that mast which was a long while back though.

UPDATE: Just read the thread a bit more! I'm going to try Police Street out! And I work in City Tower haha, never managed to get 2600MHz from there before, just poor overly congested 800MHz.

Well well well... I am certainly impressed by Vodafone's 2600MHz. I mean I can't really understand why they can't roll this out throughout the entire area of Manchester City Centre. I mean it's a no brainer really. If EE can do it then so can Vodafone.

Anyway here is my result (King Street which was found from locating Police Street).

http://www.speedtest.net/my-result/a/1880701880

A few things I've noticed,
O2 are overly Conservative with there 4g maps, it wrongly says there is no coverage where I live when I have indoor 4g as Vodafone show.
O2 have gained a good amount in coverage as in my area it seems that the majority of masts are already joint sites or Vodafone ones, not too many O2 only sites getting touched.
Vodafone don't seem to update with the same devotion and accuracy the 3g maps like they do the 4g ones, it can take a while for new 3g service to get included.

Used to work in there. Always found it miserable haha. 2600 is in a few spots round Manchester. The 2600 round Police Street is either coming from an antenna on Deansgate or in Spinningfields there is one with 2600. That needs to be on a lot more city sites in Manchester though.

That's a great speed paul...
Sounds like you were roughly where I was on Saturday, do you know if you had 4g+ (2600mhz & 800mhz 4g combined) or just 2600mhz?
I don't understand why they haven't rolled this out in more areas in manchester and other cities with potential congestion issues.
Though judging how fragile the signal was in the streets with high buildings either side I doubt it would sort many of the Brighton capacity problems.

You mean you've worked at the Vodafone Store on Market St?

To be honest I'm thinking the same but I don't know! Last I went round them parts I had such a rubbish speed, it would shoot up to about 20Mbps then start crawling down to about 11Mbps. I'm going to try the EastZEast area where the bridge is tomorrow then ill work it out from there.

I have a S5 which is Cat 4 LTE so no Carrier Aggregation support there just normal 4G which is flipping amazing! I'm not surprised such speeds are possible as I've managed 135Mbps through non aggregated EE 4G (Band 3).

I left it on Samsungs Service Mode till I found Band 7 and then went through about 30 odd tests on different parts of King Street mainly static tests and a couple while on the move.

I did average anywhere between 80-105Mbps on most occasions with 2-3 bars of Band 7 4G.

Of course the 137Mbps was achieved by selecting the perfect spot on that street with 4G full bars. At that time I was getting -71dbm which is a very strong signal considering its 2600MHz we are talking about.

I have to say I did blow through more than 2GB of data on speed tests but luckily I'm still on Vodafone's Data Test Drive so it was worthwhile to test out ha!

If it was eNodeB 141, then the signal would have been from Alberton house rather than the City Tower, as far as I'm aware there aren't any cellular antennas on the City Tower?

Didn't try in the end. Some old bloke came in and my sausages and chips went cold. I reckon wherever it's coming from is over Stoke Gabriel or summink way so it's a long way off. Certainly not Marldon.

You may indeed be correct on that part. I remember you telling me about the Alberton House mast as it's so high up which is probably the reason for the overspill. City tower is all the way in picadilly and I highly doubt the signal would stretch all the way into deansgate.

But I remember doing the odd test walking towards Alberton House and the speeds were immense which may mean if it's coming from there, they've fixed the issues on that mast from last time.

I last did a speed test there when I had one of those 50GB promo SIMS and the results were horrible.

This MIP mast at Wingmore and the one at Pett Bottom are showing 2G and 3G coverage on Vodafone's map, and are on O2's map as mast locations but showing no coverage yet.

4g speeds in Telford still seem to be suffering somewhat, despite a number of masts upgrades, the nearest mast to my work which was upgraded last week has helped but 4g is still the slowest tech bar edge, that it supports, 2100mhz 16mbps, 900mhz 8mbps, 4g 6mbps.
Speeds are better then last week when everything was under pressure with no data on 900mhz 3g, and 2mbps on 4g, only 2100mhz was unchanged as it seems largely unused.
Yes there are a few masts in the area with sectors that you can get over 50mbps in but overall purely on a speed front they are dropping at a noticeable rate, how are they holding up where you live?

Between 20-40 mega all the time, evening during peak times of day. (Wakefield) no 2600mhz here either

Between 40 and 60 from the main mast in a large town centre on Vodafone. It's been consistent since the mast was upgraded 18 months ago.

When I had an EE sim I had an issue with one mast where 4G speeds where 8-12 but 3G was 20+. It wasn't a densely populated area and was like that for over 12 months.

I drove from Birmingham to Newcastle upon Tyne today with a Vodafone sim in a mIfi locked to 4G and an iPhone in O2... I did several speed tests en route (stationary OBVIOUSLY! &#128527 and VF failed to get over 5meg down but managed around 12 up in all tests. In the same locations O2 managed to hit 40-50 down and around 20 up.. There must be a something up with Voda's core network as the tests were the same all the way...

Hallelujah!

Vodafone's coverage checker now says that there will be proper coverage in Raunds in the next 3 months!

I don't know, and cannot tell, whether it is the O2 3G2100 mast, or the old Vodafone 2G900 mast, that is getting the upgrade. I'll let you know more as I find out.

But it does indeed look like Vodafone will be bringing coverage to Raunds - at long last; after all, when did the 3G auctions take place?

Think the slower 4g speeds I'm seeing are because even with quite a few smaller masts already live, these big masts that have been turned on in the past few weeks cover a huge area and obviously a large number of people, coverage really is excellent now, phone stays 4g 90% of the time now when out and about in the town which is spread over a big area.
Not checked this week's coverage update yet but the sheer amount of work taking place around Staffordshire, Shropshire, Cheshire & the west midlands at the most is immense.
It's mainly infill work with coverage slowly growing out from edges if existing areas which seems to be the cornerstone way.

Coverage map now shows most of Devon and Cornwall planned for 'outdoor coverage' but it's not exactly clear where it is coming from. If there were to turn on the big towers like Marldon and Princetown, you would expect better coverage directly around them. Or it's just another temporary glitch on the map.

There is definitely something going on. Go to BN1 1AA, 4G, zoom out so you see the whole city and then click Planned coverage. It looks like it inverts the coverage, but not exactly.

The future 4G map is buggered someone needs their p45 how unprofessional

A new option has been added to the VF Mapserver site https://mapserver.vodafone.co.uk/arcgis/rest/services - Change_Impact. It shows the coverage of upcoming mast upgrades.

Vodafone 4G planned map now inverts the current 4G planned map silly vodafone.