Stop the trials and tests and launch it already
Tommy Ljunggren, SVP and head of systems development at Mobility Services, TeliaSonera, Sweden, has urged operators to get on and launch LTE services – without carrying out lengthy trials and tests.
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“We didn’t test at all,” he said. “No trials. We just went and launched it, communicated where we were at each stage and took that to market. And we do have a business model to make a profit out of this”
“We want more operators to launch – we believe that this is a mass market thing that should happen now,” he said. “The industry should be telling regulators and governments to open up the opportunities for their country.”
Ljunggren also called for spectrum to be made available according to 3GPP guidelines, and for governments not to be too greedy in selling spectrum.
TeliaSonera launched in Sweden in December, with a limited network in Stockholm. At the moment it has a few thousand users, limited by the availability of LTE dongles, Ljunggren said. At the moment all users are on single mode dongles, although Ljunggren said that the operator would have multi-mode dongles available in the second half of this year.
The operator will build out 25 further networks in Sweden and in four cities in Norway, Ljunggren said. And it will launch in Denmark early next year.
TeliaSonera is going it alone in LTE, despite having had a 3G network sharing deal with Tele2. Tele2 is partnering with Telenor to roll out LTE in Sweden, and claims to want to cover 99% of the population “in a few years”, using the large amounts of 900MHz spectrum that both operators have.
Speaking to Mobile Europe at LTE World Summit in Amsterdam, Ljunggren said that his vision of LTE was different from that of Tele2’s. Asked if that related to coverage, services, rollout strategy, he said, “All of the above. With 3G we had a common goal because it was a regulatory requirement to cover 99.999% of the country. When we went to launch 4G that was a different discussion. Anyway, Tele2 will be a fast follower in this market.”
In a possible dig at TeliaSonera, Bjorn Lundstrom, CTO of Tele2 said that Tele2 and Telenor wanted to launch with high quality dual mode dongles, to give users the best experience possible at launch. Lundstrom said it was his “ambition” to launch the service this year.