Date: 25/05/2009

World's first LTE based 4G site is launched in Sweden

Ericsson has installed the world's first 4G/LTE site for Swedish wireless service provider TeliaSonera. TeliaSonera has awarded this contract to both Ericsson and Huawei. This first site is part of a commercial network scheduled to go live in 2010.

Connecting to various media rich Internet applications such as watching high definition video, video conferencing, and HDTV along with normal high speed browsing (upto 100Mbps) is soon possible for Stockholm citizens through 4G/LTE services to be launched by TeliaSonera.

Users can connect to the high speed net through modem of type external or internal (with in the laptops). Eventually cell phones will have built-in modem/transceivers to support 4G/LTE.
There are reports predicting, LTE subscriptions to grow at a rate of around 400% annually between 2010 and 2014.

The competing technology for LTE, WiMAX is also growing at fast pace. Both WiMAX and LTE will sweep copper-wired-broadband or any such old technologies in to the recycle-bin all over the world. LTE is pushed by wireless telecom OEMs where as WiMAX is by leading semiconductor vendors.

Ulf Ewaldsson, Vice President and Head of Product Area Radio at Ericsson, says: "The unveiling of this site shows that LTE is no longer the story of the future; it is the story of today."