The telecommunications provider - which was formed in late 2002 following a merger between the leading Swedish and Finnish telcos – plans to upgrade approximately 800,000 broadband connections with its high-speed digital subscriber line 2 (VDSL2) technology. The company hopes this will provide data transmission speeds of between 30 and 60 megabytes per second.
The upgrade is due to be completed in 2013 and will cover approximately 450,000 TeliaSonera customers in 59 locations. The upgrade reportedly targets capacity-intensive broadband services such as advanced online gaming and high definition television.
André Malm, senior analyst at Berg Insight, believes the move has been made to keep pace both with the increasing demands of existing TeliaSonera customers and increasing competition in the Swedish market.
“TeliaSonera is experiencing competition in the domestic wireless market from Telenor and Tele2, which are together implementing a new 4G LTE network, while in the domestic fixed market it is also facing competition in urban areas from the cable provider Com Hem, which has launched an IPTV network,” said Malm.
“At the same time, there is more demand from customers for video-on-demand and HDTV, which consume more bandwidth. The customer base means more and more people use their broadband services simultaneously - particularly in family homes, where iPads, laptops and a PC will often be using a single broadband service.”
