Turkey is lagging behind as usual
Last week I received two press releases about new 4G establishments in two very different countries: Spain and Qatar. The releases were as follows.
TeliaSonera’s subsidiary Yoigo will launch 4G services in Spain in July as the first operator in the Spanish market in a bid to offer their customers a better experience and faster mobile surfing. TeliaSonera was first in the world in 2009 to launch 4G in Sweden and Norway. Since then it has continued to be a pioneer in launching 4G in all of its markets in the Nordic and Baltics.
Yoigo is the fourth mobile operator in Spain and will be able to offer their customers faster and better surfing on mobile devices with the 4G technology. At the time of the launch, the inhabitants of Madrid will be the first to have the chance to use 4G but, by the end of the year, the other largest cities in the country will also be able to surf faster and better.
“We are in the lead of the industry and are [responding to] customers’ increasing demand for mobile surfing by offering the latest technology to our customers, now also as the first operator in Spain,” says Per-Arne Blömqvist, the acting CEO of TeliaSonera. “Our customers shall have the best possible experience in mobile services, the highest speed of mobile surfing and also the best mobile coverage.”
4G will be offered at the 1800 MHz band and will have a maximum speed of over 100 Mbps. By the end of the year, 37 percent of the Spanish population will be able to use 4G where they live and by the end of 2014, over 75 percent of the population will also be able to use the new technology.
By launching 4G in Spain, TeliaSonera will now offer 4G in all countries where the group’s business area mobility services is present, that is, in Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Finland, Lithuania, Estonia, Latvia and Spain.
Meanwhile, Ooredoo has launched ultra-fast 4G mobile broadband services with data speeds up to three to six times faster than 3G for its customers in Doha. As the sole supplier, Nokia Siemens Networks built the complete LTE (long term evolution) radio and core network for the operator.
“Mobile broadband use in Qatar is growing at a dramatic pace and so is subscriber demand for faster mobile broadband,” said Waleed al-Sayed, chief operating officer at Ooredoo. “With the support of our long-standing partner Nokia Siemens Networks, our LTE network delivers truly satisfying super-fast 4G services for bandwidth-hungry customers in today’s data-dominated world.”
TeliaSonera is the biggest partner at Turkcell, and Nokia Siemens Networks are working with their rivals. So we know that technology is within our reach. So what are we waiting for as a country to enjoy faster networks? Why should we lag behind as we did with 3G? I will ask this question over and over again, as it doesn’t make any sense for me to be waiting while we claim that we will be a superpower by 2023.
