Telstra has revealed the addition of almost one million new mobile services in the six months to December 2011, but Sensis revenues plummeted 24 percent in 12 months.
Scandinavian telco, TeliaSonera has issued a press release claiming it has signed "the world's first 4G commercial contracts" and will be "First in the world with next generation's mobile broadband." Supplier Ericsson has jumped on the same bandwagon, but they are both wrong: this is 3G not 4G technology.
What TeliaSonera has done is to sign contracts with Ericsson and Huawei for upgrades to its 3G cellular networks to LTE - the Long Term Evolution of 3G cellular. Ericsson has been chosen for the initial rollout out in Stockholm and Huawei for Oslo. Rollouts of both networks have commenced and they are due to start operating in 2010. The company said it was "evaluating suppliers to deliver 4G networks in the Nordic and Baltic countries."
Erik Hallberg, senior vice president and head of mobility services Sweden, TeliaSonera said: "Our customers are among the world's most advanced users of telecommunications services. With 4G, we will provide them with the best mobile broadband capabilities they can get."
TeliaSonera may have signed the first LTE contracts but may not be the first telco with a commercial LTE network. As iTWire reported earlier this week, US telco Verizon is reported to have brought forward its LTE rollout plans to 2009.
But a bigger problem is TeliaSonera's, and Ericsson's, misuse of the term '4G'. As both organisations must know perfectly well, in the official argot of the 3GPP (the cellular standards body) and of the ITU, LTE is a 3G technology. The title of 4G will be bestowed first on LTE-Advanced or whatever emerges to meet 4G requirements already defined by 3GPP.
As the authors of "3G Evolution: HSPA and LTE for mobile broadband," (all Ericsson engineers) write: "This book has described the evolution of 3G mobile systems from WCDMA to HSPA and finally to the 3G Long Term Evolution...The next step of wireless evolution is sometimes called 4G..."
Yet Ericsson's press release on the TeliaSonera contract says it will build "a commercial 4G network for TeliaSonera," and TeliaSonera's says: "Facts: The 4G/LTE system is based on 3GPP standards for Long Term Evolution (LTE) radio technology and System Architecture Evolution (SAE) core technology."
Does it really matter that they are peddling furphies instead of facts? After all, it is just another example of PR 'spin'. However, there is enough confusion already around the various rival technologies and their position on the evolutionary spectrum without companies respected for their market leadership knowingly adding to it.
David Bass
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