Telia: Largest Operator in Nordic & Baltic Region

Telia Company has been around for a while. The following is from about the company page:

KEY FACTS AND FIGURES

• Founded in 1853
• The share is listed at Nasdaq Stockholm and Nasdaq Helsinki
• Approximately 483,000 shareholders
• From Norway to Turkey, we are present in, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Norway, Sweden, Turkey.
• 24.0 million subscriptions
• 20,400 employees

Like every other operator, Telia did a lot of tests and pilots on 5G last year. Here are a few notable announcements:


12 Apr 2018: Telia, Nokia and Intel bring 5G to the factory floor
12 Sep 2018: Telia Company and Stora Enso bring 5G and AR to the forest industry. The solutions were tested at Stora Enso’s Oulu mill in Finland where real-time information is being used in mill maintenance.
24 Sep 2019: Estonia’s first 5G network to go live. Telia Company, Ericsson and Tallinn University of Technology, TalTech, have joined forces to launch Estonia’s first 5G pilot network at the university campus by year-end.
20 Nov 2018: Telia opens 5G network in Finnish city of Oulu. A world-class industrial 5G ecosystem will be built in the Nuottasaari industrial area in Oulu, Finland, and with Telia launching a pre-commercial 5G network in the city
03 Dec 2018: Telia and Finavia bring 5G robot to Helsinki airport. Helsinki Airport becomes the first 5G airport in the world as Telia launches a 5G network and together with Finnish airport operator Finavia introduces a 5G-powered robot project.
18 Dec 2018: Telia Norway opened its first 5G test network in Norway, marking the beginning of next generation’s mobile networks in the country. First up to try it out is the Odeon movie theatre in Oslo, which is now the world's first 5G cinema.

Here is a video of 5G launch in Oslo, Norway


Here are Telia 5G 2019 objectives

Looks like Telia is just getting started with 5G with a lot more things in the pipeline.

Elisa claims "first in world to launch commercial 5G" - technical details and controversy

The Finnish & Estonian mobile operator Elisa staked the claim for "first in world to launch commercial 5G". Their press release states: 

Elisa has become the first operator in the world to begin commercial use of a 5G network and starts selling 5G subscriptions. The 5G network was used for the first time to make a video call to Kadri Simson, Minister of Economic Affairs and Infrastructure in Estonia. The video call is yet another historical achievement by Elisa: the first GSM telephone call in the world was also made using Elisa’s network. 

Source: Niina Johansson

The world’s first commercial 5G networks were launched today in Tampere and Tallinn.

–  We aim to make Finland the leading nation as a developer of 5G mobile services. The Ministry of Communications is ready to allocate the first 5G licences to the 3,400–3,800 megahertz frequency band in autumn, which will make Finland among the first countries in the world to start building 5G networks, says Anne Berner, Minister of Transport and Communications.

Source: Estonian World

5G will offer several new features to users of mobile services. For instance, 5G enables considerably faster data speeds and lower latency, as well as allowing a significantly larger number of devices to connect to the network.  This higher speed benefited the video call made over the world’s first commercial 5G network. Elisa, together with Huawei, used the first commercial 5G terminal devices in the world to make the call.

I blogged earlier about Ooredoo, STC and Etisalat staking the claim for world's first 5G networks. At least the press release by Ooredoo and Etisalat did mention the word "Commercial".

Elisa’s commercial 5G Network opened with 5 G video call from Tampere to Tallinn. @elisaoyj #5G #thefirstcall pic.twitter.com/ngjiC1JBOW

— Jaakko Wallenius (@jaakkow) June 27, 2018

Elisa's press release mentions that the licenses are yet to be allocated. Last year, the Finnish regulator FICORA issued 13 radio licences in slices of up to 100 MHz in the 3.5GHz band and up to 1,000 MHz in the 26GHz band. At that time, Elisa was already working with Nokia on 5G showing off peak data speeds were 1.5GBps and the lowest latency was 1.5 milliseconds.

This launch is with Huawei and Elisa was able to show up to 2.2Gbps. There is a picture of base station here for anyone interested.

According to this FierceWireless News:

Elisa said that together with Huawei, it used the first commercial 5G terminal devices in the world to make the call. In an email, Eetu Prieur, Elisa’s head of mobile technology, described the devices as wireless 5G routers.

At the moment, the 5G network covers the city center in Tampere and Tallin, according to Prieur. The operator is offering two subscription alternatives: unlimited data with unlimited voice for €49.90/month (about $57 U.S.) and unlimited data (voice not included) for €44.90/month (about $52 U.S.)

So this is more of a Fixed-Wireless Access kind of deployment with wireless routers backhauling on to 5G network. I am assuming the voice calls are more of VoWiFi or app based calling.

See Also:

• First impressions from the world’s first commercial 5G network - Rewheel research, August 2018