TeliaSonera Offering World's First Commercial LTE Services

According to TeliaSonera, the company's two 4G networks cover the downtown areas of Stockholm and Oslo. TeliaSonera has three nationwide 4G LTE licenses, including in Sweden, Norway and Finland.

Ericsson will supply the Stockholm 4G city network and Huawei the one in Oslo, according to TeliaSonera.

"We are very proud to be the first operator in the world to offer our customers 4G services," said Kenneth Karlberg, president and head of Mobility Services for TeliaSonera, in a statement. "The use of mobile broadband in the Nordic countries is exploding and customers need higher speeds and capacity. This is why we launched 4G services in both Stockholm and Oslo."

Long Term Evolution and WiMax are the principal 4G formats being adopted around the world. WiMax's early backers included Intel, Sprint and other companies, while LTE has support from AT&T and Verizon. The fundamental difference in the two formats is that WiMax is based on an IEEE standard (802.16), and LTE is proprietary.

In August, Verizon Wireless confirmed that it successfully completed its first LTE 4G data cells and is continuing to test those cells in Boston and Seattle.