Ericsson and TeliaSonera today announced the signing of a contract to build a commercial Long Term Evolution (LTE) mobile network covering Stockholm. The contract is Ericsson’s first for a commercial deployment of the so-called 4G technology, which it says will provide data transfer rates around ten times faster than existing mobile broadband networks. The two Swedish partners have started the rollout in the capital, with the aim of launching commercially in 2010. Ericsson will perform network implementation services and will manage the network during the initial operation period. The agreement also includes a ‘long-standing partnership where both parties will jointly evolve the way consumers use mobile broadband with LTE,’ according to the vendor’s statement.
Ericsson is providing TeliaSonera with LTE radio base stations, part of the new RBS6000 series, an Evolved Packet Core network and mobile backhaul solution including Redback’s SmartEdge 1200 routers and the latest EDA multi-access aggregation switch. The LTE system is based on 3GPP standards and System Architecture Evolution (SAE) core technology.