Sweden’s TeliaSonera has said it will offer handsets supporting its new LTE networks by early next year, a significantly more aggressive timeframe than other early movers to the technology such as Verizon Wireless. “We expect to see handhelds already early next year,” said the operator’s head of R&D, Johan Wickman, during his keynote at a Light Reading event yesterday. Other operators are not anticipating LTE handsets arriving on their new networks until later in the year, notes Light Reading. US regional operator MetroPCS has said that it will have a Samsung device available sometime in the second half of 2010, while Verizon has said that it will have up to five smartphones using the technology available by May 2011.

TeliaSonera launched commercial LTE networks in Sweden and Norway late last year, becoming the first operator in the world to do so. But, to date, access to the network has only been available by an LTE-only Samsung dongle. However, Wickman confirmed yesterday that a multimode version of the dongle – capable of falling back onto TeliaSonera’s GSM and WCDMA networks – will be available by the end of the month, while several new multimode dongles from various vendors will launch by the end of the year. Although the operator has not disclosed usage figures on its new networks, Wickman said that early feedback from consumers had been positive, particularly with regards to the low-latency of the connection. “They click and it happens, with very little delay,” he said. “We have seen a big uptick in upstream video; upstream in particular seems to be a 4G killer app.”