LTE World Premiere for TeliaSonera
It was announced today in a press conference that the first commercial LTE network is launched in Stockholm, Sweden and Oslo, Norway. The announcement brings no surprise since TeliaSonera and Ericsson have been working together on the LTE development project since 2008, aiming to launch the service commercially in 2010. Similar project was ongoing in Oslo, however with the Chinese manufacturer Huawei. The first milestone in the project was the LTE site launched in central Stockholm in May 2009.
Telia promises data rates of 50 Mbps to start with are expect to double as the network gets optimized. From the network point of view, it looks promising and today’s launch will increase the trust factor in LTE and we will see even more contracts from other operators in the world.
Note that many have already planned the rollout of LTE sometime in 2010, however many are still satisfied with the 21 Mbps that their Turbo 3G networks (HSDPA) can offer.
A disadvantage with this early launch is however on the terminal side. Read more…