LIVE FROM HUAWEI GLOBAL MOBILE BROADBAND FORUM 2013: LTE provides operators with the potential to deliver “more stable and reliable” mobile broadband networks than 3G, making roll outs a less risky proposition than the initial 3G deployments, according to Joachim Horn (pictured), group chief technology and information officer for northern and central European group Tele2.

“I think in 3G, we all messed it up. The initial experience with 3G was horrible, and it took 5 years until 3G really was there. This is different in 4G. LTE is an extremely reliable technology. It is much easier to deploy a stable and reliable network with 4G than it is with 3G, and that’s very good news for our customers,” he said.

“3G was launched, we put billions of dollars, euros, pounds, whatever, in, and it did not deliver. It was dead at birth. It took until 2006 when HSPA first came to really become a data standard. And that’s one of the reasons operators hesitate in putting investment into 4G, because there is so much investment left in 3G which needs to be paid back,” he noted.

“4G is different. It is there. It was there from day one. The chipsets are there, the phones are there, it’s a stable technology, better quality than 3G even after 12 years of development,“ he continued.

Since beginning its 4G efforts in Sweden in November 2010, Tele2 has seen its 4G data volumes exceed those of its 3G network, which took 12 years to develop, despite only 10 per cent to 15 per cent of customers being on the new network.

Noting that the new service has attracted a number of data-intensive early adopters and dongle users, nevertheless “if a user moves from 3G to 4G, they typically have 50 per cent more usage when using the same phone, just because of the super experience you have,” Horn said.

The executive noted that Tele2 took a “very brave” decision to deploy LTE at 900MHz, where it is not widely deployed, but one which also enabled it to “quickly achieve what 2G had achieved over 15 years – namely 99.x per cent population coverage.”

“Everybody said, ‘you’re crazy, why are you going 900MHz? Nobody takes 900MHz, there’s only one operator in [South] Korea. Yep, and we had to polish a lot of doorknobs to convince device suppliers to do 900MHz in their phones,” he said.

“Today, 54 devices support 900MHz. There is no reason anymore not to consider 900MHz as 800MHz, as 1800MHz – all the GSM spectrum for refarming in LTE. It’s a fantastic experience,” Horn continued.

Following the acquisition of 800MHz and 2.6GHz licences in the Netherlands, Tele2 is in the process of rolling out LTE in this market as well – where it does not already have a 2G/3G operation.

“We are not a mobile operator there yet, we are only an MVNO. And we have decided to build an LTE-only network. With the great experience we have in Sweden, we believe it is time to go just 4G,” he said.

Despite all of his optimism about the performance of 4G networks, the executive noted that there are also a number of hurdles which still need to be tackled.

These include the delivery of international roaming, native support for VoLTE in 4G handsets, handover between 4G and 2G/3G networks, and in some cases the need to support quality of service features in shared network deployments.