TeliaSonera launches the first LTE (4G) networks in Scandinavia
Let us welcome you into the future. While some already pretty well-developed countries are yet struggling to build reliable 3G networks, TeliaSonera is already making a push for LTE (the 4th gen networks) commercially available.
There aren't any publicly available phones that can make use of it but those will certainly come sooner rather than later. For now the owners of the LTE-supporting laptop modems will be the only potential customers.
The Sweden and Norwegian capital cities, Stockholm and Oslo are the first to enjoy the blessing 100Mbps-capable touch of the LTE. Ericsson supplied the equipment for the Swedes, while Huawei were chosen in Norway.
Those 100 Mpbs certainly sound pretty impressive, considering that the fastest HSPA-enabled 3G networks today offer a tenth of that. If and when will the mobile phones hardware be able to process data with such speeds is a whole other question of course, but that doesn't make the LTE technology any less of a significant achievement.
Finland will also have their 4G network up and running in Q1 of 2010, and O2 is already testing theirs in the UK so you might want to prepare for a few LTE announcements at the MWC in Barcelona in February next year. Or is it just us getting a little too excited a little too early?