TeliaSonera to upgrade phone boxes with Wi-Fi

Swedish incumbent telco TeliaSonera is equipping over 700 phone boxes with wireless internet connections. The telephone boxes will be equipped with a WLAN base station and will provide a wireless connection up to 170 yards away. Ericsson is supplying the WLAN base stations for the phone booths and Service Factory is building and configuring the underlying WLAN network. The first boxes to be upgraded will be located in Stockholm, Gothenburg and Malmö. The company will then roll out the service in approximately 20 Swedish towns, and says by the autumn the ‘surfing booths’ will cover about 50% of the Swedish population. Connecting to the internet from these booths will be free of charge during July and August. To use the service, customers will need a portable computer and a mobile telephone to receive the password. ‘With this initiative, we are expanding our Telia HomeRun wireless broadband network to create the largest public WLAN network in Sweden,’ says Erik Hallberg, head of broadband services at TeliaSonera Sweden.