Bulgarian MNO A1 activated n28 non-DSS in Sofia this week. B20 is already available nationwide. Sadly, they also messed up the configuration of the sites last week, so I am getting bad speeds. NR CA is possible (up to 7-3-1_n28-n78) only if n28 is the primary NR carrier.

20_n28 performs very well on A1 with Nokia for Service Providers AirScale 700/800/900 2T4R triple-band RRHs. The test is performed with band locking on B20 LTE and n28 5G. Tested on Xiaomi Mi 11 Lite 5G, which is reported to have bad low-band CA performance.

Bulgarian MNO Vivacom seems to have activated NR CA between n3 and n78 with n3 as a primary 5G carrier as well. They are also now requesting B20 and B28 LTE in sib5 (no n28), which would suggest an imminent launch of these bands. Sadly, it seems like they will keep n3 DSS.

Today I tested A1's 5G roaming on Orange Romania at one of Orange's main nodes in Cluj-Napoca. I got decent speeds that saturated the roaming interconnection between the 2 operators. B1, B3, B7 on Orange use Huawei RAN in Cluj, while B20 and n78 are on Ericsson RAN.

I tested n41 and n7 by Digi Romania at Piața Unirii in Cluj-Napoca. The download speeds were quite similar, but n7 had significantly better upload speeds. The cell tower in question has B20, 2G 900, B1, B7, n7 and n41 deployed on it.

Bulgarian MNO A1 has just shut down 3G in my hometown of Varna, Bulgaria. Previously I noticed they were testing the 3G shutdown in Kyustendil. The 3G shutdown is accompanied by the expansion of the B8 channel from "5 MHz" to "10 MHz" (9.4 MHz). mastdatabase.co.uk/bg/spectrum/

Bulgarian mobile operator A1 has admitted that they've shut down 3G in 3 cities: Pernik, Kyustendil and Varna. Sadly, they didn't address the issue where they aren't allowing many corporate customers to use VoLTE from the network side. techtrends.bg/2025/01/17/3g-…