Interesting.
What I have noted here (Latvia only, Sweden is different) is that recently, with more bands in use than previously, the usefully capacity from my point of view has decreased remarkably, especially in "prime time" - evenings, especially sunday evenings.
Worst of all is that the the upload rate is often near 0, making it impossible to send emails or post on forums. Closing and reopening the connection will fix that for awhile, but the problem returns.
My phones tend to jump around between the bands available, for no particular reason. That can hardly be efficient.
Note LMT is the largest operator here, owned by Swedish Telia.
Your questions are very relevant, I try to answer them clearly.
1. It appears the Operator is doing network expansions, to deal with increasing traffic loads - probably linked to Marketing campaigns to move users to LTE, so they can re-use (or trade/sell) their existing 2G (GSM900, EGSM900 & DCS1800) spectrum.
2. LTE (and HSDPA, 3G+) is all "shared" capacity, so during busy hour, providing that the Radio Resource Control (RRC) layer will admit more users to the network, then the Downlink Scheduler in the eNodeB has to share the cell's capacity around between all users, on a "proportional fair share" basis.
This is done on a 1 millisecond interval, assigning Resource Blocks (RB's) based on each user's reported channel conditions, buffered data volume, assigned priority, and a number of other conditions.
3. Uplink capacity and radio conditions in busy hour is a nightmare, it is heavily influenced by uplink interference (more users, more uplink noise), the amount of downlink co-channel interference (overshooting/overlapping cells, physical layer tuning, etc) and many network optimisation parameters will affect this (This keeps me in a job, as a consultant
)
4. The network has a set of Cell Reselection parameters which controls which band a UE will use, at any given time, based on a range of measurements and thresholds. Tuning these parameters are also part of my work, and need a lot of attention to optimise them.
You are correct, it is not efficient to be jumping bands, but many Operators do not have the required skillset to be able to tune them properly, often relying on the Vendors to do this, and the majority of people doing it do not understand them properly
.
Network growth/expansion is a horror time to be trying to optimise the Radio Access parameters, since as the conditions change (new sites, additional bands, change of sector allocations, to name a few), the scenario changes, make it nearly impossible
Hopefully this provides some clarity to the situation.