4G price war begins in Sweden

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ojala

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#71828 17-Nov-2010 20:54

While most of the world are still dreaming about 4G/LTE..

TeliaSonera opened their 4G/LTE (3.9G officially) in Sweden back in December 2009. By end of this year, it will be available in the 28 biggest cities (>=35,000 people) and during 2011 they'll add another 200 cities.
Theoretically it's up to 50-100 Mbit/s but it's more likely to feel like wireless ADSL2+, 20+ Mbit/s and rtt of 25-30 ms. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9pVedfQaJso)

TeliaSonera sells the service for 94 NZD/month (499 SEK), 18 month contract and includes a Samsung 3G/LTE USB dongle.

This week both Telenor and Tele2 opened their LTE networks in the largest cities and the price war begin immediately.

Telenor is offering the service for 103 NZD/month (549 SEK), including a Huawei 3G/LTE USB dongle -- but they are offering the first 6 months free, bringing the monthly price down to 77 NZD with a 24 month contract. The third carrier, Tele2, is offering the LTE service for 56 NZD/month for the first 12 months, and 94 NZD/month thereafter with a 18 month contract (includes a Huawei dongle as well).

TeliaSonera continues to play with their better coverage but they need to get more aggressive with pricing.

Sweden is about twice the size and population of NZ. TeliaSonera is the incumbent equivalent of Telecom, Telenor Vodafone and Tele2 2degrees.

Meanwhile, http://www.v3.co.uk/v3/news/2269446/uk-lag-behind-lte-wireless ...

johnr

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#406077 17-Nov-2010 20:58

Vodafone NZ along with NSN is testing 4G in Wellington now

John

old3eyes

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#406101 17-Nov-2010 21:57

johnr: Vodafone NZ along with NSN is testing 4G in Wellington now

John

Are you getting true 4G speeds??

Regards,

Old3eyes

sbiddle

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#406144 18-Nov-2010 06:26

old3eyes:
johnr: Vodafone NZ along with NSN is testing 4G in Wellington now

John

Are you getting true 4G speeds??

It really depends what you define as "true" 4G speeds. IMHO both new LTE and WiMAX standards fall short of some of the marketing hype in much the same way the original rel 99 WCDMA and WiMAX 802.16d networks did when they launched.

ojala

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#406145 18-Nov-2010 06:53

Just by calling it 4G is marketing. That part of the game is already lost..

I like to think if things are "worth the effort". LTE is worth it if it will perform like fixed ADSL(2) and so far the experiences from Sweden are quite promising. Is it ready yet? Depends, but running it in the public, with real customers, is an excellent way to improve it.

freitasm

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#406205 18-Nov-2010 10:12

johnr: Vodafone NZ along with NSN is testing 4G in Wellington now

John

Testing? I attended the LTE demo here in Wellington last Monday and the gear was inside the room, for the demo. I was told it was being moved to AKL for the same demo there.

In terms of speed it was showing a max of 100Mbps down. Consider that (a) it was a USB dongle with the appropriate class, (b) it was the only user in the cellsite, and (c) they cell site gear and the USB dongle were located five metres apart.

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sbiddle

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#406234 18-Nov-2010 11:48

freitasm:Testing? I attended the LTE demo here in Wellington last Monday and the gear was inside the room, for the demo. I was told it was being moved to AKL for the same demo there.

The MED only issued them a month long 2600Mhz licence for use in and around the Duxton Hotel. I hope they're not going to switch it on in Auckland without a proper licence for the spectrum!

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ojala

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#406389 18-Nov-2010 19:41

Such a demo is a bit of stretching the word "testing" :D

The swedes have a pretty good bandwidth test in place where you can see the results by connection type, region, time, carrier, etc.

http://www.bredbandskollen.se/statistik/?section=0&speed=35&region=0&month=112010
shows the 4G tests for November 2010 across the country
http://www.bredbandskollen.se/statistik/?section=0&speed=35&region=26&month=112010
shows the 4G tests for November 2010 in the capital (Stockholm) region

The 600+ tests (Antal) in TeliaSonera's LTE network in Stockholm during November have resulted an average download speed of 30 Mbit/s (Ta emot), upload speed of 11 Mbit/s (Skicka) and rtt of 42 ms (Svarstid).

http://www.bredbandskollen.se/statistik/?section=1&isp=0&region=0&month=112010
shows the different type of connections for November across the country. With over 350,000 runs by ordinary users the statistics begin to be reasonably reliable. (Notice that there are more options in the menus that will be shown in the table, e.g. 500-1000 fiber is not in the table but is in the menus)

The results are also in line with my personal opinion that the future is with wireless technology like LTE, fast cable TV internet (if available) and fiber. LTE outperforms the copper options and it will only get better by time.

ojala

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#410953 30-Nov-2010 00:17

http://4g-patrullen.se/

A nice web site where 4G speeds are being reported in Sweden, zoom into the map and one can see exactly where the speeds have been measured.

From "Senaste nytt" (latest news), 25/11 report from Norrköping, a city of 90,000 people in central Sweden, they report the highest speed of 66 Mbit/s, lowest 4 Mbit/s and on average 39.46 Mbit/s.

Other people's mileage may vary but when you start to get 20-30 Mbit/s on average over LTE, and peaks above 50 Mbit/s, future investments in xDSL start to feel pretty weak.

Fraktul

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#410965 30-Nov-2010 04:13

ojala:

Other people's mileage may vary but when you start to get 20-30 Mbit/s on average over LTE, and peaks above 50 Mbit/s, future investments in xDSL start to feel pretty weak.

Two points I would raise in consideration of that statement:

- Those networks are probably still quite lightly loaded currently
- Investment in fixed line infrastructure is still vital, additional demand for bandwidth in the future is very unlikely to be met by mobile infrastructure alone in its current form. There simply is not quantities of suitable spectrum available

ojala

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#410966 30-Nov-2010 05:07

Fraktul:
Two points I would raise in consideration of that statement:

- Those networks are probably still quite lightly loaded currently
- Investment in fixed line infrastructure is still vital, additional demand for bandwidth in the future is very unlikely to be met by mobile infrastructure alone in its current form. There simply is not quantities of suitable spectrum available

Both true. The reference was about xDSL infrastructure, fiber is different. Fiber is also necessary to the network infrastructure behind the wireless networks.

They haven't published much statistics yet but it seems that the LTE network has attracted heavier than usual users. They have reported that an average smart phone user uses 375M of data per month, people with USB dongle or MiFi device use an average of 5GB per month. However in the LTE network the average has been 15 GB per month.

Over half of the users have said that they wouldn't go back to 3G. ~25% work more on mobile basis and transfer bigger files.

No doubt the LTE network will also get better over time, just like has happened with 3G.