TeliaSonera plans to speed up LTE rollout

TeliaSonera introduced its commercial LTE 4G mobile broadband network in Sweden's second largest city Gothenburg, and says it is preparing to accelerate its rollout plan to cover 25 cities and towns by the end of this year and 218 locations by end-2011.

The date each location will receive 4G services will be dictated by the ease with which Telia can complete fiber-optic or radio links between LTE base stations and its core network, its head of mobility services, Erik Hallberg, revealed.

Hallberg added the company’s rollout plan includes augmenting the 2600MHz LTE network with 800MHz frequencies, which it expects to receive via future bandwidth auctions.

Recent tests of Telia’s LTE network in Stockholm – launched last December – gave peak download performance of 59Mbps.