Having now had 12 months experience of operating LTE networks in four countries, TeliaSonera says that the technology is significantly modifying how its customers consume media services.
Following a recent survey of its LTE subscriber base, the company said that many of those that responded reported dramatic changes to their media consumption habits. About 23 per cent watched more online TV and 28 per cent said they increasingly listened to web radio and music services like Spotify. The survey also indicated a change in how these LTE customers used internet services; for example, more than 46 per cent said they now surfed the web more frequently when away from home and 12 per cent played more online games.
Commenting on this research, Håkan Dahlström, president of business area mobility services at TeliaSonera, said, "Customers are weaving real-time services into their mobile behaviour and are at the same time expecting more of their fixed networks in home and office settings."
TeliaSonera launched its LTE service on 14th December 2009 in Oslo and Stockholm. This has now been expanded to cover 28 Swedish cities and ski resorts, as well as in four Norwegian cities. The company has also launched LTE services in Denmark and Finland and has pilot networks running in Lithuania, Estonia, Latvia and Uzbekistan.
Separately, 3 Scandinavia's CEO, Peder Ramel, has confirmed that the company is looking to purchase from Intel the 2.6GHz LTE spectrum the US firm acquired in 2008 for around US$23 million. 3 has confirmed that it is interested in the spectrum as part of its plan to launch LTE services in Sweden and Denmark in 2011. Ramel said that 3 had already bought some spectrum for the planned launches in the two countries.
Intel spokeswoman Camilla Tornblom said the firm had since evaluated the purchase it made in 2008 and concluded it makes financial sense to sell the frequencies to 3. The Swedish telecoms regulator is expected to give its go-ahead to the transaction without delay.
For more:
- see this WSJ article (sub req)
- read this release
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