Norway, home of browser vendor Opera, and delicious lutefisk, has a population of less than 5 million people and is roughly the size of the state of New Mexico. I’m sharing these facts with you to give some context to the next statement: Telenor, the number one operator in Norway, is going to rebuild their network from scratch. With Chinese infrastructure vendor Huawei building the wireless side, and Starnet, who was recently acquired by Cisco, responsible for the back-end, Telenor plans to rebuild their network over the next few years. Each new tower will support 2G, 3G and 4G, and all legacy circuit switched equipment will be thrown out and replaced in order to make their network 100% IP-based.
“This is the biggest upgrade of the mobile network in Norway we have ever carried out. It will create a solid and flexible base for further developing the services offered by the Telenor mobile network and the quality of those services. Our aim is to provide customers with better, more innovative services across the country. This means better in terms of capacity, speed and stability.” — Ragnar Kårhus, Head of Telenor Norway
In the midst of an economy that is no longer falling like a rock, but will likely be flat for years to come, Telenor has some pretty damn big balls. I blame it on the high protein diet of mainly seafood.
[Via: Cellular News]