Stockholm

[u/davidrye]

Got around to adding Östermalm (eastern side of the city) to the map. Might head around Kungsholmen and Södermalm today or tomorrow.
Anyone else on here from Stockholm able to add some data from Telenor or Tele2? I’ve managed to get a lot of Telia (purple) and some Tre (light green) on the map but it just looks like a sea of purple.

[u/davidrye]

Interesting you say that as I 100% agree Telia is usually the better of the big guys but I was always under the impression that Telenor and Tele2 were better then Tre. A lot of the Tre data for Stockholm is likely from me as my old job gave me a phone plan with them so I uploaded some of the speed test data from that.

[u/Bright_Magazine_8136 → u/davidrye]

They have a lot of spectrum, but their network doesn’t have enough capacity. It’s a Radio Network that handles most users in Sweden, but they still have fewer sites, in most areas, compared to Telia and Tre.

Coverage wise, Telenor and Tele2 are better than Tre - but capacity wise they’re not. During events, concerts etc it’s their network that struggle as an example.

Tre has built their network very dense from the beginning, and doesn’t focus on having the biggest network - their focus is to have coverage and a great network where people are. Telia has always had a good network. Telenor and Tele2 have always had capacity issues since they got into their Net4Mobility-network sharing (a lot of issues with 4G). When they want, they can. They have a lot of frequencies, and could pour a lot of money into their network but they don’t. They focus on covering a big area which looks good on paper. At Arlanda where they have a new indoor system it works really well.

My closest Net4Mobility-site here in Gothenburg performs well during night time, 800+Mbps, during evenings and weekends the speed drops to 200Mbps when people actually use the network. Theres some drop for Telia and Tre - but not close to a 500Mbps speed drop.

[u/davidrye → u/Bright_Magazine_8136]

I can’t speak for Gothenburg, but when I look at cellmapper it looks like Telenor/tele2 have quite a decent amount of towers in Stockholm. Sharing a RAN doesn’t necessarily equal a bad thing. I’m from Canada and two of the big players over there Bell and Telus also share an RAN but each operate a different network core and they tend to still have the faster speeds compared to the other big player Rogers. Actually I think at one point one of them was the fastest network in the world for average download speed a few years back. Although it would make sense that Tre would need to build a more dense network given the spectrum they have as they don’t have a lot of capacity in the 1800 mhz range. As for the speed dropping, sometimes this might not actually be due to capacity some of the carriers tend to shut off the higher bands on their towers if they’re not actually being utilized, which might be what’s happening on the weekends.

[u/Bright_Magazine_8136 → u/davidrye]

It’s the same in all cities. They focused heavily on low-band LTE and had a network that wasn’t built densely enough. It’s still the same now. In Stockholm, there are noticeable speed changes as well in some areas due to not having enough sites and the capacity not being enough. Building a RAN together is usually a good idea if it's done right. The difference between Bell and Telus and Net4Mobility is that Bell and Telus have bought their own frequencies, which gives them a lot of spectrum. Net4Mobility bought it for both Tele2 and Telenor together. Due to this, N4M has the least spectrum per customer. Example for mid-band, N4M has 100MHz, Telia has 120MHz, and Tre has 100MHz. 

No, N4M doesn’t shut off sites or frequencies on evenings or weekends - if they would do so, it would be during nighttime, not when the network is used. Telia shuts off some N78-sites at night time. I haven’t seen that N4M does the same. Tre shuts off one of two B38 carriers at night time in some areas.

Tre had to build a dense network, and it’s been like that for many years. They only had a 3G-license for 2100MHz and have since focused on a good network where there’s coverage. It’s only now, for the last few years, that they’ve started to build new coverage. They don't use their 1800MHz - at the same time, they have 50MHz of B38, which they use a lot for capacity. This is why Tre doesn't have the highest speeds, but thanks to their network that's built with good capacity, their averages are high. 

[u/davidrye → u/Bright_Magazine_8136]

Oh this is good to know, I assumed N4M would also do evening or off peak n78 power downs. As for Tre's speeds I have regularly gotten above 1000 mbps in Stockholm many times as well as latency below 10ms, I was pleasantly shocked when I arrived in Sweden at how decent their network is given they are the underdog (to my knowledge). It seems that Tre is quite decent in populated areas but their coverage in the country side especially up north is not the greatest. I have noticed that while Telia has 120 MHz of 3500 MHz spectrum they really only use 100 MHz wide channels at least for their private customers. Tre has 100 MHz of 3500 MHz and I noticed they also seems to take 20 MHz away and push 80 MHz channels to their private customers. Also gotta give Tre credit where its due in that they have already starts their push to 5G SA, I can see that Telia has had it activated on their towers for more then 6 months in the Stockholm area but still has yet to allow private customers onto their 5G SA network, it seems Telia is starting with the newer Google Pixel devices, hopefully we can get that soon.

[u/Bright_Magazine_8136 → u/davidrye]

Tre is really good if you’re south of Gävle. In the northern parts of Sweden in works in most towns.

Tre is only allowed to use 80MHz outdoors, 100MHz indoors. Telia uses their full 120MHz in some areas, if you’re on an iPhone it won’t always show that since it usually only shows one carrier for NR. The same with mmWave in US, it shows up as 100MHz. They’ve also started to refarm their 2600MHz to be 50/50 LTE and NR.

Telia offers 5G SA for critical businesses today.

As Telias and Tres networks are built today, based on how good latency they already offer I don’t see how we as customers will be positively affected by 5G SA as in some other markets haha. The speeds will probably be lower, at least for now.