Swisscom has laid out its five-year plan to cater for the rising data volume over the its mobile network which is doubling every year. As part of this, the operator announced that it will cease its 2G network by the end of 2020 to refarm the frequencies for 4G LTE and 5G networks, citing that only a mere 0.5 percent of mobile data traffic currently runs on the 2G network, even though the technology takes up 30% of antenna capacity.
According to Swisscom, it will also be fine tuning its existing 4G/LTE technology for the next five years to cater for rising demand before it deploys the 5G network. Swisscom said that it has already rolled out LTE Advanced in 16 cities and is currently testing speeds of up to 450 Mbps as part of a pilot trial in the city of Fribourg.
At the same time, the operator also has started an initiative to increase network capacity in urban areas with a pilot on an in-house developed microcells for fixed network cable conduits. The pilot which is being conducted in collaboration with Ericsson and Kathrein, is expected to be ready for a wide-scale rollout in 2016.
Heinz Herren Head IT, Network and Innovation at Swisscom
Our customers want to have access to the mobile broadband network any time, anywhere – and want to do so with excellent network quality and stability. So we can continue to offer them the best network in Switzerland in future, we now need to equip the network specifically for future requirements.
