Swisscom will launch commercial LTE services in 26 locations in Switzerland on 29 November, following trials in Berne, Zurich and seven tourist regions launched late in 2011.
The operator is using 800MHz, 1800MHz and 2.6GHz frequencies, and said it would have 70% of the population covered by the end of 2013. It will spend CHF1.5 billion on the network until 2016. Currently, the operator has HSPA+ (42Mbps) enabled across its 3G network, covering 97% of the population.
Devices at launch will be the One Xl from HTC and the Samsung Galaxy SIII 4G. There is also a dongle from Huawei and a MiFi device from ZTE. Nokia’s Lumia 920 and the Galaxy Note 2 will be available from early December.
The volume of data transmitted over Swisscom’s mobile network is doubling every 16 months, the operator said. Earlier this month the operator launched speed-based pricing, offering tiered data pricing based on maximum theoretical speeds available.