One million Telia customers use their phones for more than calls

A growing number of people in Sweden are discovering the advantages and fun of mobile phones and have become eager users of mobile services. In one year, usage of mobile data services has increased more than 300 percent among Telia’s subscribers. The number of Telia subscribers who can use mobile data services in Sweden has doubled in one year and now totals one million.

PC cards, which allow people to work on the go with their portable computers and connect remotely to the Internet and company intranet, account for 20 percent of total data traffic usage in Telia’s mobile network. “There is no doubt that we are seeing a breakthrough in the use of mobile phones for more than ordinary phone calls,” says Erik Heilborn, head of the enterprise market at TeliaSonera Sweden. “More and more companies need to be increasingly available and they want to give their employees the ability to manage their office business wherever they are. This is possible with e-mail over mobiles and connections to the Internet and corporate intranet.” Examples of other popular mobile phone services are messaging with images, sound and text (MMS, SMS), television over mobiles, news and weather services, and directory enquiries. To make it easier for Telia’s mobile users, the best and most popular services are all found on the Telia SurfPort mobile portal (www.telia.se/surfport), which works on more than 200 mobile handset models. Usage of mobile data services is measured in terms of GPRS data traffic consumption. The above information compares data on June 30, 2005 with data on June 30, 2004.