Telia expands LTE into Finland, DOCOMO makes progress
Nordic operator hopes for handsets this year, says it buys LTE kit on price
Published: 9 June, 2010
READ MORE: Finland | TeliaSonera | NTT DoCoMo | LTE
Despite all the sound and fury around Verizon Wireless' LTE plans, the commercial frontrunners have been in the countries that traditionally live at the cutting edge of mobile networks - the Nordic states and Japan. TeliaSonera, the only carrier with commercial LTE services, has announced its first plans for Finland, while Japan's NTT DOCOMO has begun user testing of its network and may roll out urban services in the fall, ahead of Verizon.
The latest LTE center for TeliaSonera, whose networks span the capitals of Sweden and Norway, is the Finnish city of Turku. This will go into pre-commercial operation this month, though the firm remained cautious on full roll-out schedules, saying: "Sonera will make decisions on the expansion and commercial roll-out of the 4G network in Finland later in 2010 based on local market conditions." According to Turku's mayor, Mikko Pukkinen, the Finnish launch will form part of the city's European Capital of Culture project.
TeliaSonera is also committed to expanding its Swedish network into 25 cities across the country this year, plus four more in Norway. It also plans to follow the Finnish launch with a deployment in Denmark and via its Baltic states subsidiaries in Estonia (EMT), Lithuania (Omnitel) and Latvia (LMT).
The carrier recently said uptake in its first two metrozones had been fairly slow, which it blamed on the lack of handsets, but it claimed last week that it would have smartphones, to add to dongles and datacards, by the end of this year, well ahead of most market assumptions.
With vendors hoping that 4G systems will represent a premium, high margin offering for at least the first few years, they will be disappointed by another comment from Telia - its head of mobile system development, Tommy Ljunggren, said the selection of its suppliers (Ericsson, Huawei and Nokia Siemens in various territories) was made almost entirely on price. "As an engineer you look at all the technology and features," he told telecoms.com. "But in the end, among the three vendors that we looked at, they were definitely on a par ... There was no technical difference between them, so in the end it came down to cost, cost, cost. That was the only selection criterion."
Also in the Nordic region, Finnish cellco Elisa has selected its LTE supplier, taking the patriotic option with Nokia Siemens for its first phase build-out. However, it will wait to go commercial until there are more devices available, it said, and will no doubt be keeping a watching brief on Telia's handset progress. Phase one of Elisa's build-out, which will start soon, will cover Finnish capital Helsinki. It stressed that it could choose different or additional vendors for its national build. "For a large roll-out its clear we have not made a final decision on the provider. Certainly Nokia Siemens is in a better position thanks to this deal," Timo Katajisto, director of production, told the Reuters new agency.
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