Samsung Launches 4G LTE Dongle

South Korean leading mobile phone maker Samsung Electronics announced on Monday the commercial availability of its 4G Long Term Evolution (LTE) dongle, meant to offer connectivity to TeliaSonera's users in Sweden and Norway. The wireless carrier, as many of you might already now, has just fired up its 4G LTE network in two cities, Stockholm, Sweden and in Oslo, Norway.

The new Samsung LTE dongle (Model Name: GT-B3710) will be offered commercially by the carrier, Samsung revealed, adding that the release of the new products follows the previous announcement regarding the selection of Samsung to deliver 4G devices to the carrier. TeliaSonera will have the dongle on sale both in Sweden and in Norway.

“We are very excited to be part of the world’s first LTE commercial service from TeliaSonera. It is a truly historic step forward in the mobile industry,” said JK Shin, executive vice president and head of the Mobile Communications Division at Samsung Electronics. “As an industry leader and innovator, Samsung will continue to offer the most advanced mobile technology to satisfy consumers’ unmet needs.”

According to the two companies, TeliaSonera's customers in Sweden and Norway have now the possibility to enjoy download speeds that peak 100 Mbps, ten times the speeds offered by 3G. The LTE services from the carrier are the first of the kind around the world, and bring new features to users that like staying connected while on the move.

“We are very proud to be the first operator in the world to offer our customers 4G services. Thanks to the successful cooperation with Samsung we can offer 4G to our customers in Sweden and Norway earlier than originally planned,” says Kenneth Karlberg, president and head of Mobility Services, TeliaSonera.

The LTE dongle from Samsung comes with support for laptops via USB connectivity. It sports Samsung’s own LTE modem chip, and can connect to LTE networks on the 2.6GHz band. Moreover, it comes with full 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) LTE Release 8 (Rel-8) standard compliance, and is expected to be followed by another dongle in the first half of the next year, one that will feature backward compatibility to LTE, HSPA, and EDGE.