OSLO (WiMAX Day). The Norwegian telecoms group Telenor announced yesterday that it will launch the first stage of a WiMAX network in Norway.

Telenor acquired licenses for 3.5 GHz spectrum in December 2004 that cover the extent of the Norwegian territory, and has been testing WiMAX technology for the last two years. Some of the main testing by Telenor has been in the North Sea where Telenor plans to bring broadband to oil rigs working several miles offshore.

While Telenor has developed a traditional ADSL broadband network that covers nearly 91 percent of the population in Norway, there remain some 700,000 to 800,000 homes that lack broadband access, as well as several thousand businesses. Telenor said that WiMAX now will be instrumental in bringing broadband to this part of the population.

The first lucky recipients of WiMAX services from Telenor will be residents and businesses along the Trøndelag coast. This region is in the centre of Norway where the largest city is Trondheim.

The company said in a press release that it has submitted a plan to the county of Sør-Trøndelag (south Trøndelag), which includes the municipalities of Frøya, Hitra, Klæbu and Snillfjord. “In addition to the private market, there are also fish farming plants and other industries which are looking forward to receiving broadband coverage in this area,” the company said.

To constuct its network, Telenor has concluded an agreement with Airspan Networks to supply the base stations for the WiMAX network.

“A WiMAX base station is the size of a laptop, and can be mounted on a mast or post. Expansion is based on existing infrastructure, but it will also take some months from the start of expansion until the first clients are on the Internet via WiMAX,” said Berit Svendsen, division manager at Telenor, in the press release.

Svendsen also noted that the WiMAX service will match the same quality of broadband supplied via ADSL, however in the short-term, the bandwidth would be restricted to 2Mbit/s. In addition, “Telenor will offer broadband telephony via WiMAX at a later date,” said Svendsen.