First commercial 4G base station being tested in Sweden

The world's first radio base station in a commercial 4G network has been deployed in Stockholm, Sweden. Or at least that's what the Swedish national incumbent telecommunications operator Telia has announced.

Telia is among a handful of mobile operators worldwide building next-generation networks for mobile broadband with 4G or LTE (Long Term Evolution) technology. The largest is Verizon, identified as a world leader by Ericsson CEO Carl-Henric Svanberg.

"The U.S. is back in the driver's seat and Verizon has taken the lead in rolling out LTE," Svanberg said in an interview recently.

Though Telia says it has connected the 4G base station to its IP network and to a test network belonging to Swedish telecom vendor Ericsson, commercial launch of the network is not expected until 2010, when modems will be available. Verizon has announced the same time frame.

Expected speeds are "10 times faster than the speeds customers enjoy today with mobile broadband in 3G networks," according to Telia.

That would mean between 60 megabits and 100 megabits per second, given that today's 3G networks with HSPA (High Speed Packet Access) technology can attain 6Mbps to 10Mbps, depending on the version deployed.

One reason why Verizon is aggressively planning for a 4G network is that its 3G network, based on EV-DO (Evolution Data Optimized) technology, doesn't match the speeds possible in HSPA networks belonging to the GSM/WCDMA family, used by operators such as Telia and AT&T. GSM stands for Global System for Mobile Communications, while WCDMA is short for Wideband Code Division Multiple Access.

Verizon expects to cover 25 to 30 markets in the first year, and to blanket the continental U.S. and Hawaii by 2015.

Meanwhile, the Norwegian incumbent Telenor has been criticized for running advertisements that promise indoor coverage for 99 percent of the Swedish population at 80Mbps to 150Mbps in its Swedish 4G network that will compete with Telia's.

Though 3G coverage is at this level in Sweden, a country slightly bigger than California, Telenor's promise is "completely unrealistic," Jens Zander, a professor in radio technology, said recently in an interview with Swedish technology weekly Ny Teknik (in Swedish).

But compared with Swedish operators, Verizon has an advantage. Verizon's 4G network will use the 700MHz segment of the wireless spectrum, permitting each base station to cover an area about five times larger than delivered in the 3.6GHz spectrum initially being used in Sweden, and also resulting in better indoor coverage.

The advertisements by Telenor were published just weeks before mobile operators in Sweden agreed on marketing realistic maximum speeds of mobile broadband, as opposed to theoretical maximum speeds often used by the industry.

The agreement stemmed from the governmental agency for consumers rights threatening the operators with heavy fines for misleading marketing.

Some telecommunications consulting firms have criticized the 4G deployment and the whole 4G concept.

"The weakness of the telecom industry is that when it's time to harvest the success of its investments, it rushes into new technology," Bengt Nordström, CEO and founder of Swedish firm Northstream, told Ny Teknik. He pointed out that both 2G and 3G technology matured four to five years after their initial launches.

And although LTE involves new radio networks with different technology, the Danish firm Strand Consult says that the 4G concept is a media invention, as LTE technology is part of the 3G standard IMT-2000.

"We know for a fact that customers that purchase mobile broadband are not asking for 1G, 2G, 3G, or 4G, they are asking and paying for the possibility of getting online and using the available services," Strand Consultant states.

[MadLyb]

The providers haven't even completed rollout of 3G and even where deployed, the performance is mediocre at best because they don't have the infrastructure to provide the throughput.

So, 4G will be just more promises broken. 60 Mbps? I'll be happy if they finally get to broadband speeds.

[gerrrg]

Today's 3G networks achieve 6 Mbps? Really? I'd love to see where that actually, real-world, happens.

Running my G1 on 3G (albeit on UMTS) is only 714 Kbps in real-world test.

And, I thought WiMax was 4G? No? All technologies talk up about how fast their POTENTIAL is, but the reality is quite different.

[ikramerica--2008]

Houston? Two years ago, I got my Mom an ATT 3G card and, when I could get reception, it ran 5Mbps (which is 6Mbps - overhead). But she couldn't get consistent reception in her house, and it kept dropping down to EDGE. Down the street at the ATT store, it was high speed. But we had to return it.

So, I've seen what 3G can do when it works. The problem is that the reception is spotty (even for others than ATT) and when the "3G" symbol pops up, it does NOT mean you are getting FULL 3G speed, only that you are on the 3G network rather than the slower 2G data network of your carrier.

The 700MHz spectrum may really help here, as it has much stronger penetration and fewer signal interruptions.

[yada88]

The title to this article is incorrect. Clearwire in the US has already rolled out WiMax in Baltimore and Portland. WiMax is 4G. The title should have read "First commercial LTE", anyone living in Baltimore, MD can already get 4G access, without having to wait for a 2010 roll-out.

[jayridius]

I believe Sweden is rolling out its LTE network in the 2.6 GHz band as are other European countries and not 3.6 GHz as the article states.

And while LTE technology is capable of speeds over 100 MBps on the dowlnink, I dont think that it can't offer that type of speed or even the 60 or 80 MBps claimed, to its subscriber base. Recently, a PC Mag article stated that Verizon's LTE network in 700 MHz would offer between 8-12 Mbps. http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2347797,00.asp While it doesn't state outright, this should be average and not peak speeds. Clearwire's WiMAX claims average speeds of 4-6 Mbps and peaks up to 11 Mbps. In any case, these are much faster than current 3G mobile technologies.