Fast 2G/3G upgrade aims to create future-proof network for Telenor Denmark

With a population of just five million, served by four communications service providers (CSP), Denmark’s mobile market is intensely competitive. Seeing the growth potential that high speed, high quality mobile broadband could offer, Telenor Denmark set itself the goal of becoming the country’s leading CSP with a future-proof network delivering a superior mobile Internet experience.

In early 2009, Telenor Denmark started the process of selecting a vendor to help it reach its goal. Extra capacity to meet growing demand for data services was needed. Furthermore, a complete transformation of Telenor’s cost structure was vital to ensure it could stay competitive in the mobile broadband arena. A high priority for Telenor Denmark’s upgrade was to achieve the lowest total cost of ownership (TCO) for the next six years.

With the market developing rapidly, Telenor Denmark was under time pressure and had to make speedy progress. The CSP needed innovative ways to bring its network upgrade to fruition as quickly as possible.

Fastest time to revenue
The Nokia Siemens Networks project proposal best met Telenor Denmark’s two critical requirements of lowest TCO and fastest time to revenue. The deal was done.

Nokia Siemens Networks is delivering an upgrade to Telenor Denmark’s 2G and 3G networks to provide nationwide EDGE, HSPA and HSPA+ services. In addition, it is implementing a new IP backbone based on the Nokia Siemens Networks Multiservice IP Backbone solution to cater for the exponential growth in bandwidth that Telenor Denmark is experiencing.

Nokia Siemens Networks is also providing project management, network implementation, planning and optimization, as well as software, hardware and competence development services to create a high quality, high availability network.

The upgrade of the 2G network is deploying EDGE coverage during the second quarter of 2010. This is up to one year faster than other vendors could offer. It’s an important step for Telenor, which lacked EDGE capability, because the deployment will improve the experience of customers moving out of 3G coverage onto the GSM network.

The upgrade of the 3G network to HSPA has brought a huge bandwidth boost to Telenor Denmark customers, while moving to HSPA+ capability will be completed throughout the entire network by June 2010.

The network also provides best support for small screen use which creates huge signaling loads. The Nokia Siemens Networks Radio Network Controller (RNC) is scalable to support high user plane traffic, signaling and connectivity demands. Furthermore, Mobile Site Connectivity and Multiservice IP Backbone solutions manage IP interworking between the backbone and site to handle time critical traffic like voice and signaling correctly, contributing further to an improved and reliable customer experience.

Ready for LTE
The award-winning Nokia Siemens Networks Flexi Multiradio base station (BTS) offers superb cost advantages with its market-leading efficiency that reduces site energy costs by up to 70 percent compared to conventional base stations. The compact BTS can be used outdoors and mounted directly on the antenna to eliminate feeder losses for a better customer experience with fewer sites and low power consumption.

Flexi BTS also supports refarming of WCDMA frequencies to the 900 MHz band when these are expected to become available to Telenor Denmark in 2011.

The upgrade project also includes widespread LTE exclusively from Nokia Siemens Networks. Flexi BTS is LTE-enabled, and requires just a software upgrade to support the new mobile broadband radio technology. Flexi Multiradio BTS is flexible and supports all possible LTE radio frequencies, which remain unknown until Denmark’s LTE license requirements are established.

Leader in Denmark
With its new network, Telenor Denmark is confident of growing its mobile broadband business and become the country’s number one CSP.

“Nokia Siemens Networks had the best offer on the table. They showed the strongest commitment to rapid deployment and high network quality. They know the different network technologies very well and will be able to tune the network’s performance to provide the highest network quality for our customers,” says Lars Rude Andersen, CEO, Telenor Denmark.