Tele2 to launch services on its own mobile network in January

Dutch telecoms operator Tele2 NL is to begin offering commercial services over its own mobile network in January 2015 according to a statement from the provider’s business-to-business director Fedor Hoevenaars at a recent telecoms conference, cited by Telecompaper. Tele2’s under-deployment 4G Long Term Evolution (LTE) network reached coverage of between 50% and 60% of the country in August 2014 while Tele2 disclosed in its Q3 2014 report that ‘construction of new [4G] sites is going according to plan … an internal testing programme has started, with a number of employees testing all different aspects of the 4G network … During the quarter, Samsung also validated Tele2’s 4G network, enabling all their LTE devices to use the network.’ Tele2 won its 800MHz/2600MHz licence in the government’s auction of October 2012, and was officially allocated the spectrum in January 2013; the ‘digital dividend’ licensing stipulated a two-year launch deadline.