World’s first commercial LTE service launch

TeliaSonera has become the first mobile operator in the world to offer a commercial LTE service, announcing an earlier than expected turn-on of LTE in Stockholm and Oslo on networks supplied, respectively by Ericsson and Huawei.

LTE is expected to be the next major standard in mobile broadband technology, and carriers have begun to convert their networks. Up to another 17 LTE networks are anticipated to be in service by the end of 2010 in the U.S., Canada, Japan, Norway, South Korea, South Africa, Sweden, Armenia and Finland, according to data from the Global Mobile Suppliers Association (GSA).

Meanwhile T-Mobile, Austria and Huawei said they had completed testing of what they claim is the world’s first LTE self organizing network (SON). The tests were carried out in Innsbruck, Austria, and demonstrated the technology’s ability to configure and optimize the network and recover automatically. As a result, Huawei claims an LTE-based SON deployment will offer operators operational cost savings associated with network planning, network deployment and network optimization.