On 30 September local time, Tusass, together with Ericsson, announced a broad collaboration to realize the shared vision of a wireless Greenland. Starting with a pilot in 2022, Non-Standalone (NSA) Fixed Wireless Access (FWA) 5G will be rolled out in Sisimiut, Maniitsoq and Narsaq, before being implemented in the rest of the country.
By deploying 5G, we will touch the daily lives of all Greenlanders,” says Kristian Reinert Davidsen, CEO of Tusass. Mobile connectivity is extremely important in the Arctics region and for many families in Greenland it is the only line of contact.”
Greenland is an island of contradictions: despite its name, 3/4 of it is covered by permanent ice. It is the largest island in the world, but also the least densely populated territory in the world, with an area of 2,166,000 square kilometers and a population of 56,000. Towns can be relatively close to each other, but there are no road connections.
By using our resilient 5G technology, the people of Greenland will be able to connect over vast distances and bring people closer to each other and to the rest of the world,” said Jenny Lindqvist, Head of Northern and Central Europe at Ericsson. From a broad perspective, this partnership serves Greenland digitally, from enabling use cases for controlling critical infrastructure and remote devices to bringing new entertainment services to the people. No matter how challenging the project is and no matter how extreme the weather conditions, Ericsson remains committed to creating a wireless Greenland together with Tusass.”
5G offers higher speeds and, more importantly, higher capacity, which will enable the network to serve many users who consume large amounts of data at the same time. As well as connecting people – the higher speeds and reliability offered by 5G-powered broadband will be vital to the island if movies, serials, football matches and games are to be watched and experienced in 8K on TV.
The partnership between Ericsson and Tusass began in 2017, which saw a complete modernisation of the mobile network, along with the addition of high quality 4G services in all densely populated areas of Greenland. This will be an important foundation as Tusass transitions from 4G to 5G. Technologies and services already deployed include a Radio Access Network (RAN) with solutions such as Ericsson Radio Systems, supported by Ericsson Cloud Packet Core for the mobile core.
