Tele2 Eesti

Company Overview

Tele2 Eesti is the smallest of the three mobile carriers operating in Estonia. The company began operations in 1997 as Ritabell AS, a subsidiary of Swedish Tele2 (Kinnevik Group), rebranded to Tele2 Eesti in 2001. The company remains a wholly owned subsidiary of the Tele2 AB Telecom Group.

The company launched 2G GSM services in 1997 over the 900 and 1800 MHz bands, and 3G UMTS services over B1 (2100 MHz) in November 2006. 3G services were expanded further with the launch of B8 (900 MHz) UMTS in March 2011.

4G LTE was commercially launched in Tallinn over B3 (1800 MHz) and B7 (2600 MHz) in November 2012. Following the acquisition of additional 2100 MHz spectrum in March 2014 Tele2 announced the replacement of its B7 service with a new B1 (2100 MHz) LTE service, with the B7 (2600 MHz) network deactivated shortly after. May 2014 saw the activation of B20 (800 MHz) LTE to provide additional capacity and extended coverage into rural areas.

The company has since launched its LTE-A network, with 2C carrier aggregation providing 225 Mbps (B1+B3, B3+B20, and B1+B20 configurations), and then in early 2017 3C carrier aggregation to provide a 375 Mbps service.

April 2017 saw the acquisition of 2300 MHz spectrum, however to date no services are active.

In January 2018 Tele2 upgraded its entire network to LTE-A Pro via a software upgrade to support 256QAM, bumping data rates from 375 Mbps to 485 Mbps.

Tele2 Estonia IoT

In partnership with Nokia, Tele2 have demonstrated NB-IoT over its B1 (2100 MHz) network in June 2016. The service is yet to be commercially activated.

Tele2 Estonia 5G

Tele2 has performed 5G testing dating back to August 2016 when the company and technology partner Nokia demonstrated data rates of 4.5 Gbps at Tallinn's Telliskivi Creative City.