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European carrier TeliaSonera is now host to the world’s first 4G, LTE mobile broadband commercial network, Ericsson announced Dec 14.
The LTE network, made available through technology from Ericsson, covers the downtown of Stockholm, Sweden, where Ericsson’s headquarters is located.
“The new era of mobile broadband has just begun today,” said Carl-Henric Svanberg, president and CEO of Ericsson, in a statement. “With LTE, so-called 4G, your mobile broadband experience is moving to unequalled levels. The LTE speed gives you an absolutely effortless feeling of broadband access.”
Ericsson describes the LTE as being capable of transferring “huge amounts of data” in a cost- and energy-efficient way that makes over-the-air transactions feel more like over fiber to the end user. Online services, even streaming HD video, can be enjoyed “effortlessly on the move,” the company said in its statement. TeliaSonera customers can access the network via LTE dongles from Samsung.
“We are very proud to be the first operator in the world to offer our customers 4G services,” Kenneth Karlberg, president of TeliaSonera, added in the statement. “Thanks to the successful cooperation with Ericsson we can offer 4G to our customers in Stockholm earlier than originally planned.”
In the United States, Verizon Wireless and AT&T plan to launch LTE networks in 2010. In August, Verizon announced it had completed its first successful LTE data calls in Boston and Seattle; Ericsson was involved in Seattle, while Alcatel-Lucent was a partner in Boston. Verizon plans to launch 30 LTE networks in 2010, before working up to nationwide coverage in 2013.
Competing against LTE in the 4G space is WiMax, which Sprint is a supporter of in the United States and which already has 4 million subscribers worldwide, according to a Oct. 20 report from analysis firm Marvedis. The firm additionally reported that of the top 35 mobile operators committed to LTE, 37 percent are planning a commercial rollout in 2010, while 29 percent are shooting for 2011 and 25 percent for 2012.
In a Dec. 3 report, ABI Research described the state of WiMax as currently something of a mixed bag and predicted that the “LTE ecosystem will eventually be vastly larger than the mobile WiMax ecosystem.”
Ericsson said in its statement that is has completed the commercialization of its LTE products, and larger production and is ready for additional deployments.