Colombian telco Une-EPM expects to launch services over its Long Term Evolution (LTE) network in March 2012, following the deployment of infrastructure by Sweden’s Ericsson and Chinese vendor Huawei. Ericsson has been tasked with rolling out the new network in Barranquilla, Cali, Cartagena and Bucaramanga, whilst Huawei will cover Bogota and Medellin.
The state-owned telco was awarded a concession for ten blocks of 5MHz in the 2500MHz-2690MHz band in June 2010, paying COP8 billion (USD4.09 million) for each block. At that time, the telco, which also provides fixed voice, broadband and IPTV services, said it planned to invest COP150 billion in the project.