Nokia announced Monday that Latvian operator LMT (Latvijas Mobilais Telefons) has selected Nokia’s 5G Standalone (SA) Core to enable new 5G services. LMT will also use Nokia’s 7220 Interconnect Router for data center fabric as part of the 5G SA deployment.
LMT is owned by Swedish multinational telco Telia Company AB. 5G SA efforts mark another milestone for LMT’s network modernization efforts. Telia operates local telecom services in Sweden, Finland, Norway, Denmark, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia.
In April 2021 LMT flipped the switch for Voice over LTE (VoLTE) over its 4G network. The company had been testing VoLTE with its 5G customers but made it available for all customers, citing its power efficiency, improved service quality and better scalability for future services. The company said at the time it was the first carrier in Latvia to support VoLTE.
A month later, LMT announced a rollout of 5G fixed wireless access (FWA) service in Latvia, for which it also claimed first . The service uses routers manufactured by Latvian network equipment maker MikroTik. The MikroTik routers feature 4*4 multiple input/multiple output (MIMO) antenna arrays. This provides users with up to 2 gigabit per second (Gbps) download speed and 200 megabit per second (Mbps) upload speeds, according to the company. LMT debuted the 5G FWA service in the Latvian city of Ādaži. The telco planned to light up other areas with FWA as LMT’s 5G network develops.
LMT already leverages several other Nokia solutions, the company noted. Those include Nokia Cloud Packet Core, Subscriber Data Management, and software solutions for 5G signaling and cloud management. Nokia claims more than 60 Communication Service Providers (CSPs) worldwide are using its 5G SA core, including “around 30” CSPs in Europe.
LMT competitor Tele2 announced in 2021 that it selected Nokia as core partner for its 5G standalone network. According to Tele2, its new core infrastructure, which underwent initial deployment in 2021, supports both 4G and 5G connectivity, granting users higher speeds and lower latencies. Tele2 has offered 5G services since 2020 in Sweden, Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia.
Telia Company recently announced the sale of B2B telecom services provider Telia Latvia SIA to Tet, completing a deal first announced in January. With remaining 49% ownership of Tet and 60.3% ownership of LMT, Telia said it remains committed to Latvian digital transformation efforts. Telia’s head of Latvia operations, Andreas Ekström, described the country as “an interesting ICT [information and communications technology] market.”
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