Get ready, folks, LTE is coming to a country near you soon (or maybe your country or even your city!). It’s happening. Yes a lot of the press that we see about LTE refers to the future several years out (and quite right too – the name is somewhat of a giveaway after all), but increasingly we’re seeing announcements about nearer term developments.
Telenor Sweden and Tele2 Sweden’s announcement includes a joint venture for network construction and sharing of spectrum. The roll-out will start this year with services based on LTE at the end of next year. I think this a smart model that others may follow in future.
In my last LTE blog, I asked: “ When and why? Well maybe I’ll come back to those issues over the next few weeks.”
This is part of the answer to the When? There are other mobile network operators pioneering near term rollouts too – NTT DoCoMo, Verizon Wireless, TeliaSonera, Century Tel, Metro PCS to name a few. Noticed the geo focus by the way: the USA, Far East & Scandinavia?
As for the Why? Well there’s more than one answer to that one but there was an interesting statement from Verizon Wireless recently. Their CTO Tony Melone said there will be more coverage with 4G than 3G! Way to go!
Tags: 3G, 3GPP, 4G, broadband, Century Tel, coverage, Japan, LTE, Metro PCS, mobile, network, NTT DoCoMo, Scandinavia, spectrum, Sweden, Tele2, Telenor, TeliaSonera, USA, Verizon Wireless
