Michael Backstrom, vice president for market unit Nordic Baltic, Ericsson, talks to Gagandeep Kaur of Voice&Data about the commercial launch of the service in Sweden

At what stage is the first commercial launch of LTE?

We signed a contract with Teliasonera last year for the roll out of LTE network for the consumers in 2010. The network will initially cover the inner part of Stockholm. The services will be launched in Stockholm first and then they have planned for the national launch later on.

When will that happen... it depends on the response to the services among other things. The services will initially target the major centers in the city. However, one has to understand that they already have a very efficient HSPA network below that, which would continue to offer broadband to the people in the region where they won't be initially offering LTE.

What kind of services and applications would be initially available on LTE network?

Initially, the service will have a lot of applications connected to the Internet. Initial devices would be dongle or built-in modems. There will be a lot of focus on business and enterprise applications.

What kind of challenges are you facing since this is the first roll out of its kind?

We already have a HSPA technology, which is also IP network, so we are using that experience too, but that is mainly from technology point of view.

There has been a lot of interest in India regarding 3G and LTE. Do you think it is advisable to move directly from 2G or 2.5G to 3G?

What HSPA has given you is data services… technically it is possible to move from 2G or 2.5G to 4G. However, I feel that three different technologies will live hand-in-hand for a very long time. So it is not like you have to go for GSM, CDMA or 4G. They will coexist. Our experience in Sweden tells us that 2G, 3G and 4G will coexist for a long time. 2G and 3G have a very good voice capacity while 3G gives you a good data capacity. So they will coexist.

The market dynamics are sure going to change with the launch of LTE. In Stockholm there are going to be at least two LTE networks. Teliasonera is the first one but Telenor will also have LTE network in the city. Telenor plans to have a national network covering 98 per cent of the population.

What role has the government played in Sweden being at the forefront of the telecommunications revolution?

The government deregulated the market very early and also made the 2.6 gigahertz band available very early. They are very fast in responding to the needs of the operator. There are two modulations schemes – TDD and FDD. In most of the world they have chosen FDD model but China has chosen TDD model for itself.

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