Thursday 16 March 2023

5G to Help Greenland Connect Over Vast Distances

Greenland, an island of just 56,000 people, is part of the Kingdom of Denmark but has broad autonomy. Greenland has, by law, only one service provider for telecommunications and the Internet, TELE Greenland, which is fully owned by the Greenlandic Home Rule government. TELE Greenland provides switched telephone and data, land mobile communications, and VHF and MF shore-to-ship communication. This type of monopoly is not uncommon in Greenland.

The state-owned TELE Greenland A/S Group was the main telecommunication and postal provider in Greenland and its headquarters are in Nuuk. It also operated the only mobile network in the country. TELE Greenland A/S was rebranded as Tusass in 2021 and all phone and postal services are under the Tusass label now. Tusass is Greenlandic slang for "talk to you later".

2G and 3G is on 900 MHz, 4G has started 2013 in Nuuk on 800 MHz (band 20) and is in these towns in 2015: Nuuk, Qaqortoq, Ilulissat, Sisimiut, Maniitsoq, Aasiaat and airport Kangerlussusuaq. Every settlement with more than 70 inhabitants has at least 2G coverage, but most areas of the country are uninhabited. Detailed coverage maps you can find here. At the end of 2018 their 4G/LTE coverage has risen to 92% of the population.

Ericsson has been contracted by Tusass to build a 5G network in Greenland, initially covering three towns. A further 10 towns, including Greenland’s capital Nuuk, are set to follow next.

Deploying Ericsson equipment and Netgear routers, Tusass intends to bring high-speed wireless internet to the sparsely populated island without resorting to expensive and hard-to-deploy cables.Tusass says it plans to invest around 1 billion Danish crowns ($131.3 million) to secure and expand Greenland's infrastructure and improve communication.

According to Jenny Lindqvist, head of Northern and Central Europe, Ericsson, a 5G network will help those living in Greenland “connect over vast distances,” a necessity in a country considered to be the least densely populated territory in the world. Only 56,000 people live in Greenland’s 2.16 million square kilometers.

“From a broad perspective, this partnership serves the digitalization of Greenland, from enabling use cases for control of critical infrastructure and remote devices to bringing new entertainment services for the people,” Lindqvist said. “Regardless of how challenging the project is or extreme the weather conditions, Ericsson remains committed to create a wireless Greenland together with Tusass.” 

In December 2022 Tusass revealed that it is planning to shut down its 3G services in 2023, in line with global trends. Tusass said that it took the decision to discontinue the technology ‘because spare parts are no longer produced, because support services are no longer provided and new technologies surpass the efficiency and quality of the old ones’. The operator disclosed that it will notify customers at least three months before the fixed shutdown date.

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