Telenor has turned on LTE networks in 11 cities and towns in Norway. The operator said more than one in three Norwegians would have LTE coverage from Telenor by the end of the year. Berit Sevndsen, Telenor Norwway CEO, said the LTE rollout "marks the start of a new mobile fairy tale."
The cities being lit up today are Oslo, Bergen, Trondheim, Stavanger, Lørenskog, Sandnes, Lillestrøm, Asker, Bærum, Lofthus in Hardanger and Longyearbyen. By the end of the year Fredrikstad, Sarpsborg, Skien, Porsgrunn, Drammen and Kristiansand will also be covered. After this an extension programme will continue until the whole of Norway is covered. Tromsø will be covered in the first quarter of 2013.
Only PC and tablet users will be able to receive Telenor-4G when it is launched, while mobile users will have it "in good time for Christmas", the operator said.
Telenor committed to a major network upgrade and ripped and replaced nearly 9,000 base stations to deploy Huawei SingleRAN kit that, in theory, will give it flexibility to deploy LTE in a flexible manner, from a single cabinet. That task was completed towards the end of 2011. The upgrade was also intended to give it the opportunity to upgrade its HSPA service to 21Mbps, to reduce the service degradation users might feel stepping from LTE to 3G coverage.
Telenor has deployed LTE in 800MHz and 2600MHz spectrum as part of the SingleRAN rollout, with 2600MHz LTE hotspots in traffic-heavy city centers and 800MHz for national coverage. Although Telenor's 1800MHz spectrum is currently still not available for LTE (so no iPhone 5 on LTE) the operator has said that in time it anticpates refarming 1800MHz spectrum for LTE.