The Faroe Islands, located in the North Atlantic Ocean, is a self-governing territory that belongs to the Kingdom of Denmark. The archipelago has a land area of 1,400 square kilometers, a sea area of 300,000 square kilometers, and a population of 54,000. The 18 islands are mainly interconnected through bridges, subsea tunnels, and ferries.

The radio access network (RAN) of Faroese Telecom, which started deploying 5G across the Faroe Islands in 2022, has been built to achieve 100% geographic coverage in terms of total landmass and sea coverage that spans up to 120 km in all directions. Since 2021, Ericsson has been the sole provider of 5G RAN and 5G Core for Faroese Telecom, including fully modernising the existing 4G Network.

The record 5G NSA data speeds were achieved on a commercial mobile network using Ericsson’s AIR 5322 and Baseband 6648 products. A downlink speed of 5.9 Gbps was clocked by aggregating 800MHz of 5G mmWave spectrum in n258 and 40 MHz of 4G FDD (frequency division duplex) using 256QAM modulation. An upload speed of 1.6 Gbps was registered by aggregating multiple carriers in the uplink and selecting an optimized Time Division Duplex (TDD).

According to the official statement, Ericsson’s mmWave technology will be deployed across all of the self-governing 18 islands of the nation, delivering high capacity and multi-gigabit, mobile broadband speeds in suburban and rural areas.

Our ambition is to have giga speed everywhere on the islands – in cities as well as in small villages, on roads, in tunnels, on mountaintops and even out to sea. Digital inclusion is a main pillar in our sustainability agenda thus reaching every centimeter and every person located on our 18 islands is paramount. This will bring unprecedented services to our consumers and businesses where world-class 5G gives key infrastructure for developing products and services paving the way for the future.

Jan Ziskasen, CEO, Foroya Tele

With these milestones, Faroese Telecom is showing the world that neither rocky volcanic islands nor changing weather are stopping them from bringing the latest 5G technology to the islands.

FT provides products and services within mobile, broadband, fixed line, subsea cables, and TV. The company has more than 117 years of history of delivering telecommunications solutions to people in the region.