Nordic LTE pioneer TeliaSonera said yesterday that it will begin rollout of LTE at its Finnish subsidiary beginning next month, reports Reuters. The operator has said it will use the same two equipment suppliers – Ericsson and Nokia Siemens Networks – as it did for its earlier LTE network rollouts in Sweden and Norway. However, Marek Hintze (pictured), chief of TeliaSonera’s mobile operations in Finland, said the company was considering using Chinese vendors Huawei and ZTE for future expansion. Hintze said that investment in LTE in Finland would be in addition to further investment in the operator’s existing 3G network. “It is clear that the total investments next year will be higher,” Hintze said. According to Reuters, TeliaSonera is set to invest EUR200 million in Finland this year. Its Finnish mobile arm – Sonera – is the country’s second largest operator with around 3 million customers.

Finland will be TeliaSonera’s fourth LTE market after Sweden, Norway and Uzbekistan (the latter via its UCell subsidiary). However, TeliaSonera already has what it describes as a “pre-commercial” network up and running in the Finnish city of Turku, which was launched as part of the city’s European Capital of Culture project. It is expected to follow the Finland launch with deployment in Denmark and in the Baltic region where it has subsidiaries in Estonia (EMT), Lithuania (Omnitel) and Latvia (LMT). It has said recently it will offer handsets supporting its new LTE networks by early next year. “What’s slowing us down is the availability of modems,” Hintze said yesterday in reference to the fact that the operator’s Nordic LTE networks are currently only accessible using a dongle from one vendor (Samsung).