TeliaSonera rocked the world in December 2009 when they became the first wireless operator to launch a commercial LTE network. Coverage was limited to central Stockholm and Oslo, but since going live their coverage map has greatly expanded. Initial benchmarks showed them delivering speeds at over 30 Mbps on average and peaking at around 80 Mbps when cell sites weren’t loaded. That being said, there were a few little details that the media glanced over. First off, the USB modem that launched in December supported LTE and only LTE, meaning if you left the coverage zone you’d have to swap your modem to one that can access the 3G network. That’s lame. It took nearly 6 months for a combo 3G/4G LTE modem to hit the market, and TeliaSonera was nice enough to give their customers an upgrade for no fee. Second, TeliaSonera launched LTE in the 2.6 GHz band, one that’s ridiculously high and has poor signal propagation and difficult penetrating buildings. That’s due to change soon since LTE in the 800 MHz band will become as common in Europe as 3G on the 2100 MHz band is today. The problem with this is that there are no multiband LTE modems … that is until this bit of news scrolled through my RSS reader.
In conjunction with ZTE, TeliaSonera is aiming to launch the ZTE MF820D in July 2011. It’s a USB modem that can access LTE on the 800 MHz, 1800 MHz, and 2600 MHz bands. Not only that, but if you get out of coverage it can access both the HSPA+ 3G network and EDGE should you be so far in the sticks that you have to hang your picnic basket from a tree so you don’t get mauled by bears while you’re camping in the wilderness.
If you thought the confusion around band support was going to get easier with time, you’ve been mistaken. There are now 4 2G bands, 5 3G bands, and there’s likely to be at least 6 4G bands.