Monday 9 September 2019

20 Years of Salt Mobile


Switzerland has approximately 11.2 million connections for a total population of 8.53 million, mobile penetration in Switzerland at the end of 2018 was nearly 132%.



Swisscom is the largest mobile phone operator in Switzerland, holding down 58.3 percent of the Swiss mobile network market. This translates to a customer base of 6.55 million customers for Swisscom, 2.78 million for Sunrise, and 1.88 million customers for Salt.


Now Europe clearly have most of the global 5G deployments as of yet but according to one vendor executive, Switzerland is “massively in the lead.” Currently Swisscom and Sunrise are both offering commercial 5G services, with the third national operator Salt working to launch sometime later this year. 



The diagrams above and below are from a report about Sunrise, but they are useful for showing the market/spectrum position of Salt. 




Salt is the smallest of the three operators has recently secured 20 megahertz in the 700 MHz band, 80 megahertz in the 3.5 GHz band and 10 megahertz in the 1.4 GHz band and are working with Nokia to begin rolling out 5G this quarter. Previously it teamed up with Nokia to showcase potential applications for 5G, achieving download speeds of 4.5 Gb/s using spectrum in the 3.5 GHz band. It also tested virtual reality applications and transmitted live video to demonstrate network characteristics such as latency of around 1 millisecond.

Nokia is supplying core and radio access network equipment based off of a deal signed in January. In terms of use cases and applications, the carrier called out video streaming and augmented and virtual reality for the consumer media market, and the internet of things for verticals including, smart cities, banking, manufacturing and tourism


Accordng to Salt CEO Pascal Grieder:

“We are committed to providing our customers with an outstanding customer experience and have identified Nokia as the right partner to deliver exceptional mobile experience. They convinced us not only through their advanced technological capabilities but also their reliability and security, which are paramount to Swiss private users as well as our country’s corporations."
Salt have also just reached their 20th anniversary:

Salt’ mobile network now covers 99% of the population with 4G services. The operator today serves 1,228,000 postpaid as well as 596,000 prepaid customers. 


In June 2019, Salt's mobile network was ranked number one among its two national competitors for the first time and ranked sixth among 318 operators tested worldwide with a total of 29,218 points by 4GMark, a platform mobile performance test.The measured average download speed was 44.2 MB / s and the average upload speed was 16.9 MB / s. These levels provide consumers with a great download experience and watch TV in high definition anywhere and anytime on their mobile device.


This achievement is the result of a great deal of investment in their network which will only further improve with the development of 5G. 



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