On the face of it this is another boring network announcement, yet Sweden has always been an important test ground for new mobile technology and services.

The initial roll out of 4G base stations and routers in Stockholm is happening now.  Based on LTE (Long Term Evolution) standards the service will be live in 2010, and initially operated by Ericsson themselves.  This will get the bugs out of the system for other deployments.

The UK tends to lag behind Scandinavian deployments by around two years.  So expect to benefit from much faster mobile services in 2012, by which time handsets (Infineon have announced an initial LTE chip) and services should have evolved to the aspirations we now have of our mobile friend.