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'TeliaSonera' AB is the dominant telephone company and mobile network operator in Sweden and Finland, and is also active in other countries in Northern, Eastern Europe and Spain, with a total (2004) of 26 million customers, 29,082 employees, sales of 81,937 million Swedish kronor, and profit of 12,964 million SEK. It is headquartered in Stockholm and its stocks are traded on the Stockholm Stock Exchange and on the Helsinki Stock Exchange.

Contents

Corporate history

Current market position

See also

External links

Corporate history

TeliaSonera is the result of a 2002 merger between the Swedish and Finnish telecommunications companies, 'Telia' and 'Sonera.' This merger followed shortly after Telia's failed merger with Norwegian telecommunications company Telenor.
Telia has a history as a state telephone monopoly, before privatisation. Sonera on the other hand used to have monopoly only on trunk network calls, while most (c. 75%) of local telecommunication was provided by telephone cooperatives. The separate brand names Telia and Sonera have continued to be used in the Swedish and Finnish markets respectively. Of the shares, 43.5 % are owned by the Swedish government, 13.2 % by the Finnish government, and the rest by institutions, companies, and private investors worldwide.
The Swedish 'Kungl. Telegrafverket' (literally: ''Royal Telegraph Works'') was founded in 1853, when the first electric telegraph line was established between Stockholm and Uppsala. Sweden was one of few countries where the Bell System never got a strong hold, because Bell's invention was not patented in Sweden and a Swedish private competitor, Allmänna Telefon, was thus able to find an independent equipment supplier in Lars Magnus Ericsson. In this early competition, Telegrafverket with its brand 'Rikstelefon' was a latecomer. However, by securing a national monopoly on long distance telephone lines, it was able with time to control and take over the local networks of quickly growing private telephone companies.
A de facto telephone monopoly position was reached around 1920, and never needed legal sanction. In 1953 the name was modernised to 'Televerket.' On July 1, 1992 this huge government agency's regulating functions was split off into Post- och telestyrelsen (PTS), with similar functions as the U.S. Federal Communications Commission. The operation of the state radio and TV broadcast network was spun off into a company named Teracom. On July 1, 1993 the remaining telephone and mobile network operator was transformed into a government-owned shareholding company, named 'Telia AB.' At the height of the dot-com bubble, on June 13, 2000, close to one third of Telia's shares were introduced on the Stockholm Stock Exchange, bringing solid cash to the Swedish state.
In the 1980s, Televerket was a pioneering mobile network operator with the NMT system, followed in the 1990s by GSM. Private competition in analogue mobile phone systems had already broken the telephone monopoly, and the growing internet allowed more opportunities for competititors. The most important of Telia's Swedish competitors in these areas has been Tele2. When PTS awarded four licenses for the 3rd generation mobile networks in December 2000, Telia was not among the winners, but has later established an agreement build a 3G network jointly with Tele2 using Tele2's licence.
During the 2006 Riksdag elections the new Alliance for Sweden (which subsequently won the election, to form a coalition government) stated a policy aim to sell its stake in TeliaSonera.

Current market position

TeliaSonera is now the largest Nordic and Baltic fixed voice, broadband and mobile operator by revenue and customer base. It operates Europe's largest and fastest growing wholesale IP backbone (AS1299) and is the 10th largest global mobile group by consolidated customers (including ownership stakes in Turkcell, Xfera, Megafon, Netcom, and others).The Mobile World, Global Multinationals: Consolidated Customers, Issue 40, p21 23 Oct 2006

See also

★ List of Finnish companies

★ List of Swedish companies

★ Skanova

★ Yoigo TeliaSonera owned 3G operator in Spain

External links

★ TeliaSonera - corporate site

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★ International Carrier - the international mobile, media & wholesale communications services division

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★ Telia in Sweden

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★ Sonera in Finland

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★ Telia in Denmark

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★ Netcom in Norway

★ Yahoo! - TeliaSonera AB Company Profile