Telenor Norge has issued a press release confirming that its legacy copper infrastructure was switched off as planned at the end of 2022, revealing that the last voice call was made over its network back on 19 December 2022.
Telenor announced plans to close its copper network back “in January 2019”: https://www.commsupdate.com/articles/2019/01/31/telenor-norge-to-expand-5g-pilot-eyes-2023-for-last-copper-customer-migrations/, at which date it had around 875,000 subscriptions accessing its services via that infrastructure. Now, in confirming the network has been shut down for its own customers, Telenor did note that around 37,000 are still being served by a copper-based service, with these being subscriptions belonging to alternative providers that have wholesale access to Telenor’s infrastructure. Note that previously, in September 2020, local regulator the National Communications Authority (Nasjonal kommunikasjonsmyndighet, Nkom) ordered Telenor to maintain wholesale access to its copper network for a five-year period.
Meanwhile, Telenor has reportedly begun the process of dismantling its copper network in those areas where it is no longer being utilised by any end-users. According to the telco, it has copper equipment in almost 4,500 locations, and as part of its network clean-up it expects to remove around 143,000km of copper cable, 500,000 piles and 250,000 distribution cabinets.
