Telenor Norway plans to completely close down its 3G network in 2020, some five years before shutting down its 2G infrastructure in 2025, the operator’s chief technical officer Magnus Zetterberg has revealed, according to Mobile World Live.

Speaking at the company’s analyst and investor day, the executive was cited as saying that Telenor Norway would look to ‘dismantle legacy networks and eventually phase out 3G in 2020, before closing out 2G by 2025 and completing the data transition’.

With regards to the reasoning behind the switch-off of 3G first, Zetterberg added: ‘It’s better to retain 2G than 3G because all the devices today are still embedded with 2G, so you will lose out without the network … 2G is still important for the [machine-to-machine] M2M market.’

Telenor targets to have 99% subscribers in 4G network

With regards to Telenor Norway’s 4G system meanwhile, by the end of 2016, the company aims to have 99% of the population within its network footprint. Further technology enhancements are also planned, with Zetterberg confirming that full rollouts of both voice-over-LTE (VoLTE) and ‘4G+’ are expected to take place by the end of next year.

Telegeography