Catching up on events - Lattelecom to go to IMS by 2017

Followup on the Tele2 fiasco

I have been remiss in updating this blog and there have been some noteworthy events that I will now belatedly relate.

First, I was more or less right about the cause of the big Tele2 crash on July 14. It was, as I said in a previous post, a “piecashit” gadget that brought down the house, but after talking to Tele2 technical director Ervīns Kampāns, the picture was a bit more complicated. What actually happened was that the system that was supposed to warn about a failure of the cooling system did itself fail, but not all the AC to DC transformers went down at once. When the first ones did, the UPS attached to the Nokia-Siemens core switch did kick in, but shared the power-supplying load with the diminished flow of current from the failing transformers. What resulted was that at some point, both the supply of current from the transformers and the UPS (which is intended to work for a short time until reserve generators kick in) was degraded and finally the core switch and all the complex systems it sustained crashed. It was, indeed, a perfect storm kind of event. According to Kampāns, Tele2 has now added additional backup and security systems, so that a repetition of the highly unlikely July 14 event is even more unlikely.

Lattelecom to go all IMS by 2017

On July 20, Lattelecom and China's Huawei announced they had signed an agreement to convert the entire Lattelecom fixed line network to run on IMS (IP Multimedia Subsystem) standards by 2017, with the first pilot tests to take place in early 2012. Migrating to IMS would expand the services available to fixed-line subscribers as well as offering them a kind of global mobility. Lattelecom would be one of the first telcos in the region to go all-IMS (globally, as far as I can see, there aren't too many other operators who have made a conversion, although IMS is used by some for a limited range of services)

People would be able to take their fixed-line Lattelecom numbers (actually, IP addresses attached to their handsets) anywhere in the world where there was a fixed or WiFi internet connection. Lattelecom CEO Juris Gulbis also told this blogger that the telco operator would develop applications for smart phones that would make it possible to call on the IMS network. With most Lattelecom subscribers on flat-rate, “free” calling plans, calls between two Lattelecom numbers anywhere in the world would cost only what the respective internet connection costs.

Technically, the move to IMS would mean eliminating most, if not all local switches and replacing them with two redundant switches to run the whole network. Existing copper landlines would be turned into DSL connections, while optical internet customers are already on the internet and would simply have their voice services upgraded to IMS.

The deal with Lattelecom is also another achievement for Huawei, which has succesfully challenged traditional infrastructure suppliers in the region, such as Sweden's Ericsson and the Finnish-German Nokia-Siemens. The project will be handled from the Chinese company's Swedisj office, which is located about a kilometer from Ericsson's headquarters in the Stockholm suburb of Kista. 

Did an obscure "piecashit" gizmo bring down Tele2 in the Baltics?

I got an official description of what happened July 14 to knock out Tele2's core switch (?) and take down (for some, briefly, in Latvia, well into the night) services to around two million customers in Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia. Despite it being a Swedish-based international telecoms company, the network crash in the Baltics (as far as I could see) got exactly fuck all coverage in the Swedish media, which, like much of Scandinavia, is zoned out in a hammock somewhere or on the beach in Greece before, to use the Latvian expression, the place goes to the Devil's mother.
Basically what happens is this: the core switch, possibly a Nokia MCSI runs on 48 volt DC current, which is fed to the device through a AC/DC transformer getting it from the 220V grid. The transformer apparently can get hot, so it has a "climate control" (read air conditioner or chiller on it). Because the AC/DC transformer is mission critical, the climate control comes with a temperature sensor and some kind of alarm that alerts Tele2 technical staff that the system has failed, but giving them enough time to prevent damage to the transformer. The alarm and the sensor are what may have been the "piecashit" gizmos that ultimately crashed the network. The alarm failed to go off until it was too late. By then, the transformer had overheated and shorted out, knocking out the switch. With no transformer, there was no way to power up the switch until extensive repairs had been made. In addition, very complex systems like mobile phone network core switches do not usually reboot very easily, especially after a power-failure induced crash.
Utility power was still on --Latvenergo's  press secretary freaked out a little when the media blamed electricity for the failure and said, rightly, that the electricity from the utility was never interrupted, it all happened inside the walls of the Tele2 facility. So it does look like one fucked gizmo brought down everything..
Except -- was there really no UPS (providing DC electricity) attached directly to the switch to keep it going for a while until the techies fix whatever broke or switch to generators? Perhaps the emergency protocol was to go directly to the generator, forgetting the possibility that the transformer, thanks to some cheapo gizmo, could blow? This is how we learn...

Charlie Foxtrot visits Tele2 in Latvia and the Baltics

As I understand it, you weren't supposed to use obscenity on US Army radios, so instead of saying that something was a clusterfuck, you said Charlie Foxtrot instead. Well, today, and to some extent, still, tonight (2100 local time, July 14), Charlie Foxtrot visited Swedish-owned Tele2 in Latvia and took a chunk out of Lithuania and Estonia as well, knocking a total of well over two million customers off the network (just over a million in Latvia, a million pre-paid users in Lithuania, and the undisclosed prepaid part of a total of 467 000 users in Estonia).
The problems started just after 1400 local time when, according to Tele2's official version, a disturbance in electricity supply took down a major switch. To me, this was an immediate, red-flag WTF?? because mission critical switches have, by default, big motherfuckers of UPS (uninterrupted power supplies) that will keep things going until utility power is restored or switched to emergency generators.
My theory is more that there was some kind of perfect storm event or someone stumbled across a power cable (between the UPS and the Mother of All Switches, if that is possible) causing enough of a power fluctuation to crash the switch at a software level and perhaps fuck up some vital hard disks. That is just my guess.
Business and post-paid customers in Lithuania were unaffected, and in Estonia, pre-paid customers were only down for around 20 minutes, or so the spokesperson said.
Whatever happened, it possibly showed the downside of Tele2  and possibly other operators rationalizing their networks by concentrating services in one switching center (for smaller countries like the Baltics). It appears that prepaid service (billing, switching) were run for all three Baltic countries on servers/switches in Riga. Given how mission critical (more mission critical than if the supporting device and software systems were distributed) the Riga switch is, one wonders how there could be any event involving electric power that could take it down. Some part of the truth may come out tommorrow (July 15).

Latvian Mobile Telephone to launch 4G demo on June 7

Latvian Mobile Telephone (LMT) will launch a demonstration of 4G mobile technology on June 7, according to an invitation sent to the press.
According to information available to this blogger, the actual test network will be set up in another Latvian city, but announced at a press event in the capital, Riga.
Your blogger will probably be on site at the actual test location. 
LMT will be the first Latvian mobile operator to launch a 4G test with speeds up to 100 Mbps, although the others -- Tele2 and Bite, have indicated serious interest in deploying the technology.
LMT is 60% directly and indirectly owned by Sweden's TeliaSonera, which launched 4G in Sweden and Norway late last year.
A commercial launch of 4G in Latvia is several years off because of unresolved problems with licences and frequency allocation. 
Lattelecom, the fixed network operator owned 49% by TeliaSonera is also running a low-key project to explore 4G possibilities.

Lattelecom looking to LTE for its mobile side?

Lattelecom, the Latvian fixed network operator owned 49 % by Sweden's TeliaSonera, may be looking in the medium term to build out a 4G or LTE (Long-Term Evolution) mobile internet network (with voice capability).
With the future of telecoms privatization in Latvia stalled and highly politicized, there is a good chance that in the next three to five years, Lattelecom could end up sold or owned seperately from its distant sister company, mobile operator LMT. Both companies have done little or no cross-selling or integration of their products.
Without some kind of mobile business, any modern telco operator that doesn't want to be a mere ISP (and even an ISP with national coverage) is hobbled. In the medium term, LTE, which hasn't even been allocated frequencies in Latvia, is a viable option. Latvia's mobile operators -- Bite and Tele2 -- have indicated they will go for LTE and its up to 100 Mbps internet speed at some point. Tele2 in Sweden is launching LTE next year together with Telenor, as is LMT's parent TeliaSonera.
Lattelecom is already cooperating with wireless/mobile internet provider Triatel (the mobile internet offering is still in the works) which runs an EV DO network countrywide and offers an unspectacular download speed of 3.6 Mbps (compared to 3.6 Mbps on the GSM/UMTS operators HSDPA networks, with 14.4 Mbps promised soon by Bite).
The Latvian government has yet to allocate frequencies for LTE, but this will happen in 2010. As far as Lattelecom and LMT goes, it still remains for the Latvian government to (as I wrote to the great amusement of a high executive in the Nordic telecoms industry) to unfuck itself on the issue of privatization (i.e. a sale to TeliaSonera of at least all of LMT). With 2010 an election year, this is unlikely, but in 2011, with yet another round of drastic budget cuts upcoming, Latvia may be ready for anyone tossing coins into its begging bowl.

Anyone sending an AYPFC? message to Tele2 Latvia?

An AYPFC message is one that starts with " Are you people fucking crazy??" Maybe it should be sent to Tele2, Latvia's biggest mobile operator (it claims) in terms of customer numbers. It was Tele2 that organized the "meteorite falls in Latvia" stunt that got the country its 15 minutes (or more) of underserved international fame. As if a meteor strike on top of a devastating economic crisis was something positive. It was certainly not something that Latvia "caused" by its own activity.

The publicity stunt, which caused underpaid Latvian firemen, police and soldiers to rush to a huge smoking crater outside Mazsalaca, a kind of Latvian Podunk, certainly had no message about mobile telecoms services. It had the unintended and black humor effect of causing some totally batshit* local lady (reputedly a local town councilor, where they don't check if you are batshit or not) to stand in a road selling tickets for 1 LVL apiece to curiousity seekers.

I am beginning to wonder whether Tele2's marketing director Jānis Spoģis has gone off the deep end. Maybe not, because the previous goon-show style Tele2 commercial, with adults skateboarding off rooftops into swimming pools and doing burnouts on a kitchen floor with a motorscooter reputedly came from Sweden, where the Tele2 group is headquartered. So the Vikings are back to eating those mushrooms again...

By contrast, the local Latvian commercials for the Zelta Zivtiņa (Golden Fish) prepaid cards have been charming even when bizarre, such as when the cow Gauja moves into the "Friends" - style apartment with the usual characters. Or when one of the characters sews a huge crocodile for "nothing" -- the price of calls to a circle of friends on the Tele2 network.

Apparently this is not the end of the Viking mescalero (people who chew hallucinogenic cacti) campaign. We will probably see fake sea (lake) monsters rising from a Latvian lake or perhaps UFO-style balloons floating high in the sky (we'll see if Tele2 will be as ready to pay for scrambling NATO F-16s as it was to compensate the fire department). Well, the balloon thing was already done by a family of wackos in America.

I am in Las Vegas as I write, the capital of "unreal" in the US, though at a a very real IBM Information on Demand (IOD2009) conference and the whole meteorite incident seems even beyond building a second Eiffel Tower (where you can get married) which the Vegas folks have done.

* from the urban dictionary :)

batshit insane
	When someone has crossed into extreme insanity.

Latvia looks to improve mobile services procurement

Sorry to be a bit late with this, but on May 13, Tele2 organized a round table discussion gathering almost all players in the procurement of mobile services for the public sector in Latvia. Present were representatives of the host, Tele2, LMT, Bite, Baltkom, the State Auditor (Ingūna Sudraba in person), the Procurement Oversight Authority, the State Chancellery, the City of Riga, the Latvian Telecommunications Association and others.

After hearing complaints that procurement was biased toward certain players (implied was LMT), and that the state could save at least LVL 4 million by doing things differently, including regular reviews of tariffs and shorter contract periods (Bite's Fred Hrenchuk pointed out that no private business would ever lock itself into a 60 month or five year contract when mobile services prices were dropping month on month).

Jānis Lelis, managing director of the Latvian Telecommunications Association, said that mobile service consumers (including the public sector) need to be educated about their options, which would help them make considerable savings. He gave an example (naming no names) where the association had advised a customer to go to another operator and get an offer. The offer was for a substantial cut in costs, but the customer then brought the offer to his existing services provider and got an even better deal.

This confirmed my suspicions that Tele2 and perhaps Bite -- while their claims of lower tariffs are quite true -- are often used as bargaining chips by LMT customers to -- at the end of the day -- squeeze better deals from LMT. This doesn't mean that Petras Kirdeika, the managing director of Tele2 in Latvia is wrong in saying (as he has for about a year) that he can cut the public sector mobile bill by 30%.  He probably can. The incumbent, with some grinding of teeth, can probably offer 33 % (or some other package -- like free calls to all users from the same government agency) and keep the customer.

The most interesting outcome of the discussion was general agreement with Ms. Sudraba that public authorities could purchase mobile services according to one basic standard and possibly under one umbrella agreement rather than drafting tender rules and standards for each and every ministry, state agency and municipality. It would also avoid drafting unreasonable standards - such as 95 % national coverage for services to be used largely within a single municipality.  As Bite's Hrenchuk asked rhetorically: " Why do they need coverage near the Russian border?" (referring to a town a couple of hundred kilometers from the border zone.

It now appears that some kind of working group will be formed to work out how umbrella standards and procedures could be drafted for mobile (and telecommunications services in general) procurement. This would move Latvia toward the models used in other countries, such as Sweden's authority for coordinating state purchases. 

Nothing special :)

The switch from February to March left the "front page" of this blog strangely and surprisingly blank 8/! So I am writing just to put some content in so people don't think the whole thing has died.
It is, however, a pretty dead time in Latvian telecoms. The mobile operators are trying to outdo each other on quasi-flat rate deals (I am going to Paris with Tele2 next week, they may have something interesting to say). Tommorrow (March 3) I am going to Paris for Alcatel Lucent and will do the usual video blog reports, etc. New leadership, Pat Russo & Co. are gone. It will be interesting.

What may happen in 2009

Any of my Latvian-speaking readers may recognize this as a slight re-hash of what I wrote on my Latvian-language blog. However, having woken up at an early jet-lagged (or jet-pushed, as I am "ahead" and waking at 0530 after going to bed around 2230) hour here in the US, I will share some thoughts on what may be ahead in Latvian telecoms in 2009.

The government (or whatever government is in charge) will continue to endlessly drag its feet on the privatization of Lattelecom and mobile operator LMT. With the financial markets globally in a shambles and share prices down to rock-bottom, it is unlikely that anyone will pay or get a good price for either Latvian operator. The offer made by TeliaSonera to pay over 500 million LVL for the remaining state stakes in both companies would have been the deal of the decade. The Latvian government simply blew it. On this issue, there is no direction home (as Bob Dylan put it).

Lattelecom, meanwhile, will be very busy. It has to start its DSL to FTTH conversion (offering 100 Mbps to internet subscribers, instead of the present 10 Mbps) that will replace copper with fiber over the next three years for most Lattelecom internet users. The other project it will have to start immediately is setting up a digital terrestrial television network across the country. It won a tender for this project to convert the national television broadcast system to digital by 2011(?). The company has experience putting together a program package for its IP television service (which does not have a spectacular number of users, though it is growing), but terrestrial broadcast could be something new for it.

Meanwhile, cable operator IZZI will be boosting its internet services network to deliver 100 Mbps as well. What will Baltcom do?

The mobile operators, after a winter of advertising how easy it is to have "heartfelt conversations" with you darling kitten or beary-poo (the latest marketing campaigns by Bite and LMT have this kind of stuff), may get back to some real competition. One area for re-slicing the market could be government and local government, where Tele2 has been repeatedly claiming it can cut phone costs for such organizations by up to 30%. Now that we are starting a year (0r several) of santims-pinching, it may be worth a try to check out whether Tele2 can come up with the goods.

Triatel, the CDMA and EVDO wireless internet operator, will still be looking for a buyer (this has been a low-key story for some months) but will face the same market conditions as everyone. Not a good idea to sell itself on the cheap. Oh, and I think the CDMA voice business is no big deal, it is the rural wireless internet coverage that may make this company attractive.

On wireless/mobile internet, look for everyone in the Latvian mobile space to jump to 14.4 Mbps by the end of the year, perhaps to the HSDPA on steroids of 21 Mbps (Tele2 is doing it in Sweden).  2010 or 2011 may see some attempts at LTE on the Latvian market, or what will be left after the economic ravages many people are expecting.

At last, the light is sweating (Latvian- gaismiņa svīst) here in Newton, MA, so I may get back to this topic later.  Now  a shower and some breakfast. 

More on the iPhone tizzy in Latvia

Finally Fred Hrenchuk, CEO of Bite Latvija, has written, apparently from vacation in Canada, that Bite is testing iPhones with selected customers and will start selling the gadgets once these tests are done.
So it now looks like sometime in the next few weeks, there will be two operators offering iPhone 3G packages on the Latvian market. LMT, which has remained largely silent and missed the August 22 launch date (only the Estonians have started selling iPhones).
If there are any Lithuanians reading this, what is the take on Bite selling iPhones in your country? Will Vodafone (through its "fatting calf") get the jump on TeliaSonera in the two other Baltic countries?
As for me, my employer has me chained to Tele2, which currently has no iPhone plans. Anything from big momma Tele2 in Sweden (not that I know of)? However, one of the senior people at LETA has been seen fingering* an earlier model iPhone and speaking very well of it. As for me, I might be interested in an unbundled iPhone if the price is not outrageous...

Tele2 starts a music download store in Latvia

Mobile operator Tele2 on May 20 launched a music download store for its customers in Latvia, offering around 4 million songs. Later, the content will be available on the web.
This blogger had a chance to talk to Bonnie De Souza, Tele2's (Sweden) recently appointed product manager for music. Here is the video:

The "bee"stings with a shorter stinger..

Bite (bee in Latvian) has cut its previously "privileged" interconnect tariff in order to prod the two major operators, Latvian Mobile Telephone (LMT) and Tele2 into cutting what it considers excessive charges for calls from the other networks to Bite numbers.
Fred Hrenchuk, the chief honcho of Bite Latvija, says that the 0.08 LVL interconnect tariff Bite has been charging will be cut to 0.062 LVL (what the incumbents charge each other) to remove any basis for arguing that calls to Bite "cost more". He says that LMT and Tele2 have been overcharging their own customer for call to Bite by up to 0.09 LVL per minute compared to the charge for a call to either Tele2 or LMT. Bite was granted a higher interconnect in 2005 as a third, "underdog"entrant to the market.
Tele2 has recently (consciously or not) pre-empted Bite's move in its ZZ Postpaid tariff plan, where calls to all other operators, including Bite, are charged at 0.15 LVL per minute. In othe Tele2 plans, there is still a differential of several santims between calls to LMT and Bite.
Hrenchuk explained that the two incumbents have been making money from calls to Bite in two ways -- the net amount Bite pays on interconnect clearing (more calls are made by Bite customers to the incumbents than from LMT and Tele2 to Bite) and the excessive charge for calls to Bite compared to calls to other operators. Thus an operator whose customers make 100 000 minutes of calls to Bite and take 150 000 minutes from Bite would be owed (by netting out or clearing) around 3100 LVL (at the new lower rate) from Bite. However, assuming that calls to Bite cost an average LVL 0.06 more per minute, the calling volume would also generate 6000 LVL in extra revenue compared to what calls to other operators generate.
Bite Latvija hopes cutting the interconnect charges and publicizing the tariff differentials will prod or shame the major operators into bringing tariffs for calls to Bite in line with other tariffs. A letter urging such steps has been sent to Tele2, LMT and Lattelecom.

Tele2 open to Lattelecom on its network

Tele2 in Latvia is open to the idea of Lattelecom starting a virtual mobile operator on its network, Tele2 Latvia CEO Petras Kirdeika told this blogger.

Kirdeika said Tele2 would consider a commercially viable proposal from Lattelecom or any other operator wishing to lease part of Tele2's mobile network.

He said that the company would also be ready to negotiate a co-financing agreement if Lattelecom's (or another operator's) needs required the building of additional network capacity.

In reporting its third-quarter results, Tele2 said it had built a record 50 base stations across the country during the period.

Lattelecom CEO Nils Melngailis has said that if the company succeeds with its MBO, it will have to move quickly to offer mobile services in addition to fixed line telephony and internet. Bite Latvija, which has hitherto been open to virtual operators, effectively declared a moratorium on new actors on its network after being purchased by  Mid Europa Partners, a private equity company. Kenneth Campbell, CEO of the Bite Group, told this blogger (as reported in the magazine Kapitāls), that Bite's priority was to strengthen its own brand. 

He let it be understood that Lattelecom was such potentially strong brand that it could not be allowed to cannibalize Bite's potential and existing customers.

Tele2 Latvia's CEO on 3rd quarter results

Petras Kirdeika, CEO of Tele2 in Latvia, talks about third quarter results. Last year (2006), Tele2 was ranked as the most profitable company in Latvia. Here is the video:

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Tele2 Latvia negotiating a club music service

Tele2 in Latvia and Dub Tools, a Swedish mobile services developer, are negotiating to offer the club music platform R.FM in Latvia in the next few months. Dub Tools CEO Peo Strömberg talks about the new service below (note: the video was edited for my Latvian blog, so there are Latvian opening and closing titles and the "Latvian spelling" of Strömberg's name, plus some small errors).

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Tele2 Latvia honcho on Q2 results

Tele2 Latvia board chairman Petras Kirdeika talks about Q2 and first half results, with revenue up 17 % to LVL 60.51 million (in the first half of 2007) and EBITDA up 13 % to LVL 28.1 million (Petras doesn't mention the figures in the video). Tele2 is the largest operator in Latvia by number of users -- over 1.1 million, but still trails rival Latvian Mobile Telephone (LMT) in terms of revenues. Petras also said at a press breakfast that he was getting good growth of business customers and postpaids (around 70 % of Tele2 customers are prepaid).

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Tele2 to expand 3G/HSDPA coverage in Latvia

Tele2 is going to expand 3G and HSDPA mobile broadband coverage to the towns of Liepaja and Daugavpils by fall, according to the company's chief honcho Petras Kirdeika. He talks about this and other matters, including the new "slant" on the corporate logo, in this video:

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Things to watch for while I am gone

I'm off to the US via Sweden. After stopping off in Stockholm overnight, I will be flying to Boston on May 19 and back again on May 27 (I'll be in Riga again May 29). In the meantime, there are some things to look for in Latvia. The half-mother (TeliaSonera) was due to officially respond to the management/staff buy-out proposal from Lattelecom. Unofficially, they have said OK some weeks ago. Nobody else is seriously looking to buy the half-mother's 49 %.
The only stumbling block is, to my mind, a bizarre demand by TeliaSonera that Lattelecom refrain from entering the mobile services market for two years (this, according to unofficial sources). The strange thing is, that if this is intended to protect TeliaSonera's forthcoming 100 % holding in Latvian Mobile Telephone (LMT), it is aimed at the wrong threat. Tele2 and, to a lesser extent, Bite (as well as Triatel with its "out of the box" wireless services) are more of a challenge to LMT than a hypothetical and, most likely, virtual Bite-based mobile service launched by Lattelecom at some point in the future. Tele2, especially, is aggressively pursuing business customers. To ban Lattelecom from going mobile is sort of like getting a chastity pledge from wolves so that their unborn cub won't come hunting while at the same time, a crocodile (Tele2) is chewing on one of your legs. End this craziness, TeliaSonera, and let's get on with the deal...L

James Enck shuts it down and other matters

A blogger that I often read, James Enck in his EuroTelcoBlog, has announced that he is closing it down because of a major job change. James is leaving his post at Daiwa in London apparently to join a high powered Wall Street team (he doesn't say who). For one reason or another, blogging is not part of the game where he is going, though he doesn't exclude that he could reappear in the blogosphere. I enjoyed reading James from time to time and took note of his interest in FTTx solutions, probably the only way that fixed-line operators can stay significantly ahead in the bandwidth and speed categories. Best of luck to James at his new position.
I also shuffled through some statistics from the Latvian Telecommunications Association on market shares on the total voice (fixed and mobile) market. Tele2 is the biggest by a slight margin (in terms of users) with 32.4 % in 2006, followed by Latvian Mobile Telephone (LMT) at 31.8 % . Lattelecom had 21.1 %. The total market grew, however, by 14.6 % and the share of "other" voice providers grew to 14.7 % of the market from 4.7 % in 2005. Most of this growth is due to the appearance of Bite as a serious competitor during the year. In early 2007, they chalked up user 200 000, a person in the town of Jelgava who got 200 000 free minutes on the Bite network as a prize.
What is a bit confusing is that there is certainly some duplication of users -- most mobile users are also on the Lattelecom net, if not as voice callers from home, then as DSL subscribers (there are more than 100 000 of them). Also, fixed voice is folding into internet. Many of the 100 000 + DSL subscribers and those using other internet services are surely using Skype a lot. Skype says Latvia is one of the densest user locations relative to population.
In essence, except for charge by the minute mobile calling, the voice market is relatively meaningless as voice becomes a feature of flat-rate internet. In a few years, as reasonably priced flat-rate mobile internet spreads, voice (mobile Skype and the like) will also become a feature of this service. So soon, there will be little reason to talk about voice :).

Interview with Johnny Svedberg, Tele2

Johnny Svedberg, Tele2's executive vice president in charge of the Baltics and Russia, talked to this blogger about the future of mobile telecoms generally as well as some of Tele2's plans for Latvia. In terms of customers, Tele2 is the largest operator on the market and Latvia is the only market where Tele2 is number one.