LONDON — Swedish wireless infrastructure group Ericsson has installed, in collaboration with network provider TeliaSonera, what is said to be the first 'commercial' network conforming to LTE specifications.

The LTE site, in Stockholm, is not strictly commercial, since there are no paying customers on it, and will be part of the Nordic carrier's commercial LTE network in Sweden's capital city, which is scheduled to go live in 2010.

The Nordic countries are pushing ahead fast in testing and deploying the Long Term Evolution networks. Last month Tele2 Sweden and Telenor Sweden - the country's second- and third-largest operators, respectively – said they will build a nationwide LTE network through a new joint venture, dubbed Net4 Mobility.

Infrastructure equipment manufacturers in the frame are expected to include, again, Ericsson, as well as Nokia Siemens Networks and Chinese suppliers Huawei Technologies and ZTE.

That deal was the first network sharing arrangement for the emerging high data-rate broadband technology.

Ericsson did not say how many bases stations have been deployed in the Stockholm site it is collaborating on with TeliaSonera, nor the peak downlink and uplink speeds that the network can deliver. Neither were financial details revealed for the contract.

The Swedish operator has so far been one of the most aggressive operators when it comes to rolling out LTE. It acquired spectrum in the 2.6GHz band for Swedish Kronor 563 million ($75 million) in May 2008, and started building the network in January.

"The unveiling of this site shows that LTE is no longer the story of the future; it is the story of today," said Ulf Ewaldsson, vice president and head of product area radio at Ericsson, who was keen to emphasize that LTE is moving off the drawing board and that Ericsson is at the vanguard of deployment.

TeliaSonera said earlier this year that Ericsson and Huawei were its preferred providers for its initial commercial LTE contracts. The Scandinavian operator plans to roll out LTE service in Sweden and Norway. Ericsson is rolling out the network in Stockholm while Huawei is deploying the LTE network in Oslo, Norway.

Ericsson, along with Alcatel-Lucent, has also been selected by Verizon for LTE deployment. The US operators, part owned by Vodafone, says it aims to roll out commercial LTE services in 20 to 30 US markets next year.

Although Ericsson is putting its weight behind LTE, it is also pushing heavily HSPA+ upgrades to mobile operators' existing 3G networks for high data rate wireless broadband.

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