Broadband network inaugurated in Municipality of Malung

The residents of the Municipality of Malung will soon have access to broadband. Malung’s new broadband network, which covers more than 98 percent of the people living in the municipality, was officially inaugurated on Wednesday, March 2, by municipal officials and the network provider TeliaSonera Network Sales. Households and companies in the Municipality of Malung can now order broadband services with speeds from 250 Kbit/s up to 24 Mbit/s.

Like other municipalities in the Dalarna region (west central Sweden), the Municipality of Malung signed an agreement with TeliaSonera Network Sales for the build-out of a municipality-wide broadband network in June 2004. The installation work is now more or less finished and the network was officially inaugurated at an information meeting held at the company Lima Utvecklings AB (LUAB) on Wednesday. Participating in the inauguration were representatives for the municipality, TeliaSonera Network Sales and the local business community. “Consumers and the business community have been eagerly waiting for the arrival of this broadband network. We are constantly searching for better communications in Malung and now we have taken a great leap forward,” says Kurt Podgorski, chairman of the executive board for the Municipality of Malung. All telecom switching centres in the Municipality of Malung have been upgraded for ADSL, except those in Granfjällsstöten, Löten, Gräsheden, Näsfjället and Husvallsgölen, which will be placed in service by the beginning of April at the latest. ADSL technology utilises copper cable in the existing telephone network and allows a very high broadband penetration rate, even in rural areas. Most of the towns and communities in the municipality have also been interconnected by a network using fibre optic cable or radio links with very high transmission speeds. Residents in the Municipality of Uddevalla are now free to choose one of the Internet operators that offer broadband services to consumers and companies through the network. Depending on their choice of operator, households can choose services with speeds from 250 Kbit/s up to 24 Mbit/s. Companies with heavy demands for broadband capacity can also connect to the fibre optic/radio link network to get very high transmission speeds. “We have been waiting for this network for many years and it will make things so much easier for us. We have hardly been able to use the Internet up to now. We send a lot of pictures and drawings over the Web, and with a dial-up modem, it takes too much time. We have been really looking forward to the development of broadband service in the area and now opportunities are opening up that we couldn’t even imagine before,” says Pär Larsson, managing director of Larsson-Hus, a company that designs and builds timber homes.