Posts Tagged ‘Telia Sweden LTE’
Early examples of LTE pricing in Europe relatively affordable
In his wireless blog, Alastair Brydon reviews early examples of LTE pricing, in Denmark, Germany and Sweden.
Now that a number of European LTE services have been launched, I’ve reviewed the early pricing models being adopted in three countries. The table below shows the current LTE pricing charged by Telia (Denmark), Telia (Sweden) and Vodafone (Germany).
The most expensive LTE tariffs are charged at similar level in all three countries – between EUR53.50 and EUR67.12. These services provide download speeds up to 50-80Mbps, with a 30GB monthly data allowance. While these prices are higher than equivalent so-called ‘superfast’ fibre-to-the-cabinet (FTTC) fixed broadband services, there is not a huge price premium.
These tariffs correspond to a minimum price per gigabyte that varies between EUR1.78 (in Denmark for a 30GB data allowance) and EUR2.67 (in Germany for a 15GB data allowance). The price per GB is generally lower than most HSPA mobile broadband services, where operators provide significantly lower monthly allowances in general. For example, in the UK, where mobile network operators are facing significant capacity challenges, O2 now offers just a single HSPA mobile broadband service, with a 1GB monthly allowance for £10.21, which corresponds to a price per GB of EUR11.49. This is around five times greater than the price per GB of these LTE services.
As with superfast fixed broadband services in Europe, mobile operators are pricing according to both the monthly data allowance and the speed of the service, with the highest speeds reserved for customers on the most expensive tariffs.
Prices are much more affordable for customers willing to accept lower levels of performance and a lower monthly data allowance, with services offering up to about 20Mbps download speed costing around EUR40 per month in all three countries.
Table of LTE Pricing in Denmark, Germany and Sweden
[Note that the price per GB applies only if the
customer consumes the entire monthly allowance.]
About the author:
Alastair Brydon is co-founder of telecom analysis and telecom consultancy company Unwired Insight. He provides regular in-depth analysis on LTE and 4G. He has written over 40 reports on the biggest issues in the wireless industry.
Wireless blog: LTE deployment will start in 2010
LTE will be a major enhancement to 3G networks. It utilises a completely new modulation (for a 3G system) – OFDM – which has been widely adopted for WLAN (IEEE 802.11a/b/g), WiMAX, DVB digital terrestrial TV and DAB digital radio.
While LTE can support narrower bandwidths than HSPA/HSPA+ (supporting bandwidths as low as 1.5MHz), it is its use of wider bandwidths (up to 20MHz) that allows LTE to achieve substantial throughput advantages over HSPA/HSPA+.
LTE is designed to offer peak theoretical download rates of between 173Mbps and 326Mbps (depending on the number of MIMO antennas used) in 20MHz of spectrum. Theoretical peak upload speeds will be 86Mbps using 20MHz spectrum. All terminals should be able to operate using 20MHz of bandwidth to achieve the best performance possible from LTE.
The LTE Radio Access Network technical specification was approved in January 2008 and is being incorporated into 3GPP Release 8.
Most 3G operators with HSPA networks are expected to upgrade to LTE at some stage. In April 2009, the GSA (Global mobile Suppliers Association) announced that 31 operators had committed to LTE deployment. A number of 3G operators are expected to deploy LTE in 2010, which include:
- NTT DoCoMo and KDDI, in Japan
- Verizon Wireless, in the USA
- Rogers Wireless (in time for the 2010 Olympics) and Telus, in Canada
- TeliaSonera, in Sweden and Norway
- Tele3 and Telenor (which are jointly building an LTE network), in Sweden.
Alastair Brydon has written over 40 research reports on the biggest issues in the telecom industry, including mobile coverage. He is co-founder of Unwired Insight.
