TeliaSonera launches 4G in Finland

LTE pioneer TeliaSonera has launched Finland’s first commercial LTE service, in the cities of Turku and Helsinki. The Nordic and Baltic specialist activated the world’s first LTE service in Stockholm and Oslo a year ago.

“The explosive growth of mobile broadband shows that the demand for bandwidth is unlimited, and with 4G we can offer more speed and capacity for mobile data,” says Marek Hintze, Head of TeliaSonera’s Mobility Services in Finland. “We have now been operating our 4G network for pilot customers in Turku for six months and the interest in 4G has steadily increased. Therefore we are very happy to launch commercially.”

As in the Swedish and Norwegian deployments, service will be limited to dongle-enabled laptop access, with Korean vendor Samsung supplying the dongles. Hintze said that service in Helsinki will be extended beyond the business district when the firm has access to dongles that operate in the 1.8GHz frequency band. Finland has allocated both 1.8GHz and 2.GHz spectrum for LTE and multimode modems are expected to be available during the spring of 2011, he said.

The Turku network was supplied by Nokia Siemens Networks, while Ericsson provided the kit for the Helsinki deployment. TeliaSonera said that it has yet to decide which vendor will win nationwide deployment contracts.

The price for carrier’s 4G service “Sonera Full Net 4G” is €46/month, including a 4G modem that supports also 3G and 2G.

Meanwhile TeliaSonera also announced that its Kcell subsidiary in Khazakhstan will begin offering 3G services from December 1^st.