A large number of telephone booths in Sweden may become Internet cafes as the country’s leading broadband company TeliaSonera has planned to establish more than 700 new Internet surfing zones by equipping a number of its telephone booths with fast wireless connections.

 

In a statement issued on Monday, TeliaSonera, which is also known as Telia, said the first booths to be upgraded will be those located in the country’s three principal cities — Stockholm, Gothenburg, and Malmö.

 

What is interesting is Internet connection to surfing booths will be free of charge during the entire summer.

 

As part of the program, Telia will equip each booth with a WLAN base station from Ericsson (News - Alert) that provides a wireless connection within a radius of approximately 150 meters from the booth.

 

With this initiative, Telia will be able to offer fast wireless connections to the Internet in more than 700 phone booths located in shopping galleries and shopping centers, as well as outdoors in public places.

 

During July and August, there will be no charge for surfing.

 

All that telephone booths require to be transformed into Internet cafes is a portable computer and a mobile telephone to receive the password.

 

“We’re now taking the phone booth into the 2000s and making it part of Telia’s nationwide network. With this initiative, we are expanding our Telia HomeRun wireless broadband network to create the largest public WLAN network in Sweden,” says Erik Hallberg, Head of Broadband Services at TeliaSonera Sweden, in a statement.

 

The first set of surfing booths will be set up in Stockholm, Gothenburg and Malmö. Then on, they may spread out across 20 towns in Sweden. These Internet cafes are expected to cater to the needs of well over 50 percent of the Swedish population.

 

Ericsson is supplying the WLAN base stations for the phone booths and Service Factory is building and configuring the underlying WLAN network.

 

The increased demand for wireless Internet connections is contributed to the fact that more and more people want to be able to work outside their office, to be precise, from their homes.

 

Telia’s 2007 Summer Trends Survey indicated that 89 percent of the Swedish people are planning to work outside the office sometime during the summer.

 

Given the survey, one out of two Swedes (53 percent) are planning to work outside the office as many as one to three days a week.

 

TeliaSonera is the leading telecommunications company in the Nordic and Baltic region, with strong positions within mobile communications in Eurasia, Turkey and Russia. At the end of 2006, TeliaSonera launched mobile services in Spain.

 

“Wireless access to the Internet provides greater flexibility in both private life and working life. As a leading provider of nationwide broadband service, our growth is being driven by our continued focus on services of the future and developing products that meet our customer’s needs,” said Erik Hallberg.

 

-----

Narayan Bhat is a contributing editor for TMCnet. To see more of his articles, please visit his columnist page.