7 Jul 2009Sweden Broadband Overview

Prior to 1993 the Swedish state controlled the incumbent was public service corporation Televerket. Although the Swedish market has never protected a legal monopoly, Televerket was for a long time the only provider of public voice telecommunications services in Sweden. In 1993, the government transformed Televerket from a state-owned public utility into a limited company and changed its name to Telia AB. In June 2000, the Swedish state sold 30 per cent of Telia shares in an initial public offering.

In December 2002, Telia merged with Finnish telco Sonera to form TeliaSonera. The merger brought together two of the leading telecommunications companies in the region and resulted in the formation of a leading telecommunications group in the Nordic and Baltic regions with strong market positions also in Eurasia, Russia and Turkey. In Q2 2007, the Swedish government sold an 8 per cent stake in TeliaSonera to institutional investors for SEK18 billion. The Swedish government is still the single biggest shareholder with a 37.3 per cent stake, while the Finnish government owns a 13.7 per cent stake. At the end of 2008, Swedish institutional investors owned 24.2 per cent of the outstanding shares in TeliaSonera.

By 30 June 2008, there were 5.4 million fixed telephone subscriptions in Sweden, compared to 5.5 million a year earlier. The number of PSTN and ISDN subscriptions is falling while the number of IP-based telephony subscribers is increasing. By the end of Q2 2008, the number of IP-based subscriptions increased by around 31 per cent year-on-year to 656,000. During the same period, the number of PSTN-based lines fell by about 5 per cent, from less than 4.9 million to just over 4.6 million. The recent survey by the regulator suggested that every third person in the country is willing to forego traditional fixed telephony in favour of IP telephony, and 10 per cent have already done so.

TeliaSonera remains the largest telecoms company with a fixed telephony market share of 54 per cent at the end of 2008, but it has lost ground since 2007. It is followed by Tele2, Comhem and Bredbandsbolaget who have all increased their shares slightly.

TeliaSonera is also the largest player in the mobile market with a share of 39 per cent, followed by Tele2/Comviq (25 per cent) and Telenor (16 per cent). Compared to the previous year, TeliaSonera saw its share shrink by 4 per cent while Tele2/Comviq has expanded its share by 3 per cent. However, TeliaSonera has the largest 3G network covering about 9 million inhabitants. Furthermore, in May 2008, TeliaSonera won a 4G licence in Sweden. The operator hopes to offer mobile broadband services with over 100 Mbps speeds using the 4G technology by 2010.

In 2008, the market for mobile call services and mobile data continued to grow. Between 30 June 2007 and 30 June 2008, the number of subscriptions and active pre-paid cards increased from 9.9 million to 10.5 million despite the fact that 107,000 NMT subscriptions were terminated due to TeliaSonera discontinuing its operation in the analogue NMT network.