TeliaSonera is not only the leading Nordic operator in terms of LTE customer, but it is also benefiting from the early arrival of LTE mobile phones in Sweden. The operator said it expects to be able to offer voice-over-LTE (VoLTE) services starting in 2013.
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TeliaSonera will launch the Samsung Galaxy S II LTE. |
According to Bloomberg, TeliaSonera said it now has around 100,000 customers on its LTE network in the Nordic region, putting it ahead of rivals Tele2 and Telenor. TeliaSonera first launched its LTE services in Stockholm and Oslo in December 2009, making it the first operator in the world to launch LTE services.
Tele2 and Telenor each sell services on the same LTE network in Sweden. Tele2 has accumulated about 40,000 LTE subscribers since starting its service in November 2010 in Sweden, spokeswoman Pernilla Oldmark told Bloomberg. Telenor said it currently has subscriptions in "five figures," while 3 Scandinavia has yet to launch services.
Now, TeliaSonera is also selling the Samsung Galaxy S II LTE in Sweden, after Germany and Sweden became the first two countries in Europe to announce the availability of LTE smartphones. Tele2 is also selling the same handset, although Telenor has yet to add an LTE phone to its portfolio. In Germany, both Vodafone and Deutsche Telekom have started to sell LTE smartphones and tablets.
According to Light Reading, TeleSonera believes it is also on course to offer VoLTE in 2013, when it expects devices supporting this capability to be available. With VoLTE, voice is delivered in the same way as data in IP packets and is based on the IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS). Circuit-switched fallback is currently being used to power voice services on LTE smartphones.
For more:
- see this Bloomberg article
- see this Wall Street Journal blog post (sub. req.)
- see this Light Reading article
- see this Macworld article
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