Thursday, December 17, 2009

TeliaSonera honcho on the 4G launch

I happened to be in Stockholm on December 14, when TeliaSonera announced it was launching the first commercial LTE network in the Swedish capital (and its Norwegian subsidiary NetCom was doing the same in Oslo). TeliaSonera's Mobility Services honcho Kenneth Karlberg spoke to this blogger just after the launch press conference. The video has bilingual English/Latvian titles, as it also appears on my Latvian-language blog for my "day job".

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

Well... "lauch" is slightly premature. On the press conference customer were urged to go to one specific Telia Store in Stockholm to buy the product.

Before opening hours the next people were queueing up outside the said shop.

When entering, Telia had a bounch of photographers and TV-camera men covering the "great event".

The first customer was handed the 4G modem package and was interviewed.

When the cameras were turned off the customers were told that the boxes were only empty boxes. There are no modems.

The empty boxes were given back and the customers got little piece of paper with a queueing number on...

Anticlimax... or maybe even fraud...

Börje Gustavsson, Sweden

Juris Kaža said...

I don't know about fraud, but a publicity stunt if this was really so. Did those with queue numbers get modems the same day? Or a few days later?

Anonymous said...

As far as I know, they haven't got any yet.

Telia claims there are 4G modems "on the way in"... whatever that means.

Telia originally had 1000 units, but I believe they are used for testing purposes.

And about the coverage... it's about the size of Vecriga.

For people living in that area (central Stockholm) the prize of the data service is about 25 santimi per month!

So you can imagine the interest in
central Stockholm.

BG, Sweden

Anonymous said...

No 4G modems so far and no date of delievery!

If giving away empty boxes instead of the real goods isn't fraud... then I don't know what fraud is.

BG, Sweden

buy r4i kaart said...

Verizon Wireless is next in 2010!!! Yay!!!! I can't wait to drop my AT&T DSL at home!!!!!

r4 kaart said...

Can't wait to test out a 4G network whow :) Any news if it is actually live allready?

r4 kaart said...

I must say i don't see the difference so much with the 3G