- published: 17 Jan 2013
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TeliaSonera AB is the dominant telephone company and mobile network operator in Sweden and Finland. The company has operations in other countries in Northern, Eastern Europe, Central Asia and Spain, with a total of 150 million mobile customers (2010). It is headquartered in Stockholm and its stocks are traded on the Stockholm Stock Exchange and on the Helsinki Stock Exchange.
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, now its chief competitor in the Nordic countries.
Telia has a history as a state telephone monopoly, before privatization. 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, 37 % are owned by the Swedish government, 13.2 % by the Finnish government, and the rest by institutions, companies, and private investors worldwide.