TeliaSonera launches commercial LTE in Stockholm and Oslo

By telecoms.com editorial

Nordic carrier TeliaSonera has deployed what it claims are the world’s first two commercial LTE networks, offering maximum throughput speeds of 100Mbits/s.

2010 has long been proclaimed the year of LTE deployment but TeliaSonera’s new networks, located in the Norwegian city of Oslo and Sweden, Stockholm, managed to beat that deadline by 17 days.

Ericsson supplied the Swedish network, while in Norway the kit was delivered by Chinese vendor Huawei.

Kenneth Karlberg, president and head of mobility services at TeliaSonera, said: “We are very proud to be the first operator in the world to offer our customers 4G services. The use of mobile broadband in the Nordic countries is exploding and customers need higher speeds and capacity. This is why we [have launched] 4G services in both Stockholm and Oslo.” As well as nationwide licences for LTE in Sweden and Norway, TeliaSonera more recently won a licence in Finland.

In October TeliaSonera named Samsung as its device partner for LTE and, as the carrier and Huawei were announcing the network launch on Monday, the Korean handset vendor revealed that its LTE dongle product was the launch device. Samsung’s GT-B3710 dongle, which uses the firm’s own modem chip, the Kalmia, is not backwards compatible. An updated version of the product, due out in the first half of next year, will allow connectivity over LTE, HSPA and EDGE.

TeliaSonera holds second place in the Norwegian market, with 2.15 subscribers to its Netcom brand in October this year, according to Informa Telecoms & Media’s WCIS, and second place also in Finland, with 2.83m subscribers as of September this year.