Showing posts with label Finland. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Finland. Show all posts

Wednesday 6 May 2020

Virve 2.0 - Finland's 4G/5G Public Safety Network

State Security Networks Group Finland (Erillisverkot) safeguards the Finnish society by offering authorities and critical operators engaged in critical infrastructure and services secure and reliable ICT services. Much like in the civilian world, communication between authorities includes transferring images and video material to an increasing degree, which results in ever-growing data transfer volumes and, subsequently, new kinds of demands for all communication networks. 


Virve is a means of ensuring communication and cooperation between authorities and other partners across organisational borders into the future. It also entails the introduction of a higher service standard, as the transfer to broadband, estimated to take place in 2022, will make it possible to transfer video material, images and data. This will mean that it will be possible to send video material in a reliable and secure way in the case of accidents, for example. The radio network Virve, based on Tetra technology, will reach the end of its lifecycle by the end of the 2020s. The current Virve network will be used simultaneously with the new Virve 2.0 network until, at least, 2025.


Erillisverkot will acquire the broadband Virve 2.0 radio access network as a service from Elisa and the core systems from Ericsson. Separate networks will ensure the continuity of critical communications and operational capability of public safety in all situations in the future.

I would assume this would be MOCN, similar to the UK deployment of ESN networks as shown here.

Virve 2.0 subcribers will use Elisa’s public radio network, which the operator is expanding to become Finland’s largest data and voice network.

About 80 million messages pass through the Virve system every week. Elisa is committed to increasing the coverage, capacity and verification of its mobile network to meet the requirements of Virve 2.0.

The new online services will provide support for critical communication between public authorities and other parties.

The addition of image, video, and other wireless broadband services alongside existing Virve services will enable a better and more up-to-date view of the day-to-day operations of authorities and other actors.

The IoT enables automatic monitoring of rescue personnel and mobile use of surveillance cameras and drones.

The Virve 2.0 radio network service will be in use from 2021 and will include the 4G and 5G technologies and the internet of things. The contract is for ten years.

Finally, a recent advert of Elisa explaining 5G to outside world



Further Study:
  • Erillisverkot: Obstacles for MCX Broadband and how to overcome them [PDF]
  • Erillisverkot: Virve Broadband Plans for the Future - Critical Communications Europe 2019 [PDF]
  • 5G-XCast Whitepaper: Rapidly Deployable Network System for Critical Communications in Remote Locations [PDF]
  • Erillisverkot: White paper - Virve 2.0 RFI Summary of responses [PDF]
  • Erillisverkot: Factsheet - What is Virve 2.0? [PDF]

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Sunday 23 June 2019

Finland: A country with only Unlimited Data Plans


I was listening to Elisa couple of weeks back, at 5G World Summit. One of the things that surprised me was that Elisa offered unlimited data plans but the price varied based on the maximum speeds possible. The same approach was going to continue with 5G. When 5G data speeds would improve, new packages will be added with the improved speeds.


Tefficient has pointed out multiple times that even though all operators in Finland offer unlimited data plans, their ARPU has increased in 2018. This is in contrast to the other mature markets, even though they may not be offering unlimited data plans.


Same thing was pointed out by Rewheel research that highlighted in their May 2019 report that, "Finnish operators that executed ‘unlimited everything’ strategies were the undisputed champions of the 4G era"

A mashable article pointed out that "5G will be crazy fast, but it'll be worthless without unlimited data". This is very true.


Mobile operators should start thinking about how they can offer unlimited data plans, especially if they keep touting applications that are going to use loads of data. As you can see from the tweet above, a 1 hour 8K video streaming would roughly use between 7 - 10 GB of data.

Let me know your thoughts.