PER DANIELSEN NORDIC BUSINESS
Nordic optical telcos PUNCH ABOVE THEIRWEIGHT
Peter Laurin, Head of Business Area Managed Services, Ericsson, says, “We anticipate IoT devices will surpass mobile phones as the largest category of connected devices as early as 2018 and, according to Ericsson’s latest Mobility Report, there will be 18 billion connected IoT devices in 2022. This massive uptake requires a di erent approach to network planning, design, operations and capabilities than traditional mobile broadband networks.” READY FOR 5G Nokia is also ready to help operators to launch the new 5G mobile services. With Nokia’s 5G FIRST approach, operators can gain a first-to-market advantage by launching 5G use cases before the standards have been finalized. 5G FIRST builds on Nokia’s commercial 5G Nokia AirScale and AirFrame platforms to provide a versatile solution that spans the network. merger between the Swedish and Finnish telecommunications companies, Telia and Sonera. This merger followed shortly after Telia’s failed merger with Norwegian telecommunications company Telenor, now its chief competitor in the Nordic countries. Telia has for many years been challenged by the many municipal networks in Sweden o ering higher bandwidth with a fibre connection. Today the privately owned Com Hem reaches 40 percent of the Swedish households. More than two million households connected via their landlords or via open LAN networks (often owned by the municipality) are able to subscribe to Com Hem digital services in broadband, digital TV and telephony. Over 40% of the digital TV customers subscribe to TiVo – the next generation TV-service. Com Hem has over 2 million homes connected to their network, meaning that about four out of ten households in FTTH PENETRATION Telia Company is the result of a 2002
As ECOC comes to Gothenburg, it is apt to review the remarkable success of this corner of Europe in this industry. Danish native Per Danielsen reports.
PER DANIELSEN
M ore than sixty years ago, in 1946, the three Scandinavian countries Sweden, Norway and Denmark founded Scandinavian Airlines System – now better known as SAS. It was formed as a partnership by the three national carriers to handle the intercontinental air tra c of the three Scandinavian countries. Since the beginning, 50 % of SAS has been owned by private investors and the other half shared by the three national governments. A good question to ask here and now is why do the Nordic countries have such a great tradition in developing optical and countries have also maintained a long tradition of cooperation within mobile communications. For example, in 1982 the first-generation mobile network NMT (Nordic Mobile Telephone) was launched in the four Nordic countries, Sweden, Norway, Denmark and Finland. It was the first fully cellular phone system. NMT was specified by the Nordic telecommunications administrations and opened for service on 1 October 1981. The success of NMT was important to Nokia (then Mobira) and Ericsson. First Danish implementers were Storno (then owned by General Electric, later taken over by Motorola) and AP (later taken over by Philips). NMT was gradually replaced by 2G (aka GSM) and was finally closed down in mobile communication systems? In a similar way to its approach to the airline business, the Nordic
2007. But a strong base for development of mobile communication had been established. However, in the telecommunications business the situation is quite the opposite, with the three incumbent carriers, TeliaSonera (based in Sweden), Telenor (Norway) and TDC (Denmark), actively fighting and competing in their respective neighbouring markets. INNOVATION TRADITION The Nordic countries have a long tradition of driving the development of telecoms, and the wider market is now seeing more and more Nordic companies taking steps towards developing and actively commercialising Internet of Things (IoT) products and services. The next generation of wireless mobile technology, 5G, is designed for IoT with requirements for low device power consumption, low latency and more capacity. Sweden and Norway are also among the European countries with the highest penetration of fibre-to-the-home. Ericsson, for example, has a long tradition in being a first-mover in mobile network technologies. As the first commercial Internet of Things (IoT) networks are introduced, Ericsson is complementing its cellular IoT software and IoT Accelerator o erings with a complete set of network services. These services enable service providers to e ciently address the deployment and operation of the massive number of IoT devices being introduced to LTE networks.
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| ISSUE 10 | Q3 2017
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