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The Swedish state should expropriate TeliaSonera. Telecommunications were much better (more stable, better access in rural areas and cheaper) when it was subject to public control.

Are you insane? Dont you remeber the cots to make a longdistanse* call 1990? Do you remeber the cost of making a call with a mobile phone? Phonecalles has become uppto 90% cheper sins the telecom market was delregulated.

*Long distance doesent even exist in Sweden sins the deregulation, you pay $10/mounth for unlimited calls to swedish landlines.
 
^^ Let's keep this thread out of the PRSI-forum, so please no long discussion on government ownership/control over a country's infrastructure (even if that might be a nice topic for a thread in mentioned forum). ;)
 
The Swedish state should expropriate TeliaSonera. Telecommunications were much better (more stable, better access in rural areas and cheaper) when it was subject to public control.
Well... no. State owned companies w/ monopoly are terrible because they have nothing to compete with, and endless amounts of tax money to waste. Telia (formerly known as Televerket) was no exception, they charged ridiculous amounts for long-distance calls, and their service was crappy. My phone bill was 10 times higher in the early 1990's than it is now.

Having said that, there are certain benefits to living in a quasi-socialist country. The broadband rollout in Sweden was easy as pie due to the state owning most of the telecommunications infrastructure, and more importantly everything under the land surface. That's why most Swedes can enjoy 24 mbit DSL, and many can get 100 mbit FibreLAN, while Americans are stuck with 20th century style broadband (2 mbit etc), because when they try to roll out broadband between A and B there are many greedy and grumpy land owners, either uncooperative or demanding a piece of the pie. Americans are hoping for turbo-wireless to give them fast internet access, since it's easier to roll out in the US as nobody owns the air... yet.

^^ Let's keep this thread out of the PRSI-forum, so please no long discussion on government ownership/control over a country's infrastructure (even if that might be a nice topic for a thread in mentioned forum). ;)
Well, sorry but isn't that very much on topic here? Government owned infrastructure is the reason why TeliaSonera has the upper hand, which is the reason why they got the exclusive iPhone deal.
 
Fortunately for you, unlocking an iPhone has become very very easy.

For now it is. What about the future? What if Apple comes out with a firmware that you can't break and contains some must-have features? I personally won't take the risk of buying a jailbroken iPhone but that's just me.

Joshua.
 
For now it is. What about the future? What if Apple comes out with a firmware that you can't break and contains some must-have features? I personally won't take the risk of buying a jailbroken iPhone but that's just me.

Joshua.
Yeah, chances are that they're improving the security on the iPhone 2... they could make it so that Apple approved 3rd party software won't run on jailbroken phones, or they could pump out official software updates so fast that jailbroken iPhones are always two steps behind.

We know that whatever software based protection the iPhone 2 has will be hacked within days, so they're probably going for something else, somehow making it into an unlivable inconvenience to jailbreak your iP2...
 
Apple did it because they figure that Sweden is the most important country of the bunch; it has the highest population and it's the most hi-tech crazy of them all. And as others have pointed out earlier, Telenor sucks donkey balls in Sweden. They has decent coverage in high-density areas like Stockholm, but as soon as you put one foot in rural areas your phone is dead.

Telia and Telenor could have been partners but the Norwegians were hopeless to negotiate with (I believe Norway was referred to as "the last Soviet state" by the Swedish representatives), so Telia teamed up with Finnish Sonera instead. This was bound to come back and bite Norway in the ass at some point, and I guess the iPhone is it.

Apple's decision may suck for Norway, but for Sweden and Finland it rocks, it's OK-ish for the Danes, and the dirt-poor Baltic countries don't care anyway as they still use tin cans and a long string for their communication needs.

Your post is a bit offensive, mate. The last time I checked one of the, sorry, THE most successful phone company came from Finland (its called NOKIA, btw. Prolly you find the name on your current cellphone). The Baltic countries have higher growth rates and more innovative companies than Sweden, Norway, Denmark and Finland, and are far from backward.

The decision to go with Sonera does NOT rock for the Finns, as Sonera is arguably the worst operator in the country, as said before high costs and crappy service. But as the phone only will be for a short amount of time be locked to Sonera, there is hope.

ps: Frustrated because you lost the Icehockey Match against the Finns?
 
Your post is a bit offensive, mate. The last time I checked one of the, sorry, THE most successful phone company came from Finland (its called NOKIA, btw. Prolly you find the name on your current cellphone)
Nokia is a network operator in Finland? You can get your phone bill from Nokia? Sounds bizarre. That's like Ericsson starting up a network in Sweden, infuriating TeliaSonera, Telenor and everyone else who buys Ericsson's infrastructure hardware. And no, I don't own a Nokia phone, I gave up in 1999 after three Nokia phones in a row. The build quality was abysmal and the software kept crashing so I switched to SonyEricsson, which is better but nowhere near as good as the iPhone.

The Baltic countries have higher growth rates and more innovative companies than Sweden, Norway, Denmark and Finland, and are far from backward.
Yes, of course their growth rate is higher since they started from zero when the iron curtain disappeared. That's like saying toddlers grow faster than teenagers, what's the point? They still have light years to go before they're in the western european league.

ps: Frustrated because you lost the Icehockey Match against the Finns?
Nope, not interested in sports. What did you win, gold, silver, bronze, cookies...?
 
Sweet sounds like they will be everywhere by the end of the year!
 
don't jump the gun

Realize that while one carrier made the announcement, it may not be the ONLY carrier in these countries to offer/support the iPhone.

As you may have read, there appears to be a new approach with many countries rolling out this year with more than one carrier in each.

It seems :apple: has given up on the idea of preventing the unlocking of the iPhone - it has become even easier to jailbreak and unlock with more recent firmware updates. They do profit from unlocked iPhones and their subscription model (where they share in monthly revenue from the carriers) seems to be changing as well.

I think you can expect more freedom to choose your carrier with the new iPhone being released next month (as expected).

So don't get your panties all up in a wad.:p

PS. Is it donkey balls or monkey balls that the carriers suck?
 
who cares what carrier got the deal. You`ll all be ordering american ones at less than half the price and jailbreaking them anyways. I know i will.
 
I wonder can I in Finland purchase the iPhone without a subscription or by subsidizing the price. I believe the law says you can sell a 3G phone with a subscription, but that manufacturers should also offer it without one. At least the majority of the cell phones are freely available for purchase at many electronics stores.
 
Realize that while one carrier made the announcement, it may not be the ONLY carrier in these countries to offer/support the iPhone.
From what I've read on Swedish news sites today, it's the only carrier for the foreseeable future, which admittedly isn't exactly a vast expanse of time in the hi-tech world, things may change in a year or so. The other two Swedish carriers, Telenor and Tre, are really bummed today. Telenor even started selling Macs and iPods in their phone stores a while ago in an attempt to kiss up to Apple, but it didn't work.

PS. Is it donkey balls or monkey balls that the carriers suck?
I don't know which is the worst ball sucking experience of the two, and I don't think I want to, because then I'd also have formed an opinion on which of the two is preferable. :eek:
 
Lets hope this means Apple also has some interest in the Nordic market for its computer products.. and put a damn spell checker in for finnish into OS X:)
 
I wonder can I in Finland purchase the iPhone without a subscription or by subsidizing the price. I believe the law says you can sell a 3G phone with a subscription, but that manufacturers should also offer it without one. At least the majority of the cell phones are freely available for purchase at many electronics stores.

It looks like the iPhone will become the first phone ever in Finland that is only availeable through a carrier.

I'l pass on iPhone since I really really really don't wanna be tied to a carrier. Especially carrier so sucky as Sonera. I've been using mobile-phones since early 90's and during that time I've never had a simlocked phone or phone tied to any contract.
 
This is great news if TeliaSonera (or Sonera in Finland) will follow the current data transfer rates. Currently, their cheapest unlimited data packet costs about 15€/month. (Some other operators offer lower rates, about 10€.) There is a speed limit of 512 Kbps. With some extra money, you get higher speed limit.

Same feeling here. Sonera (as it's known in Finland) is the single most crappiest operator here. The prices are high and the service low.
Not really. True, they are one of the most expensive operators - but their service is good & reliable.

They had for a long time completely free 24/7 customer service. Nowadays, I think it's about 0.15€/min but still almost 24/7, except on Sundays. In Finland, the operator must refund all the CS costs to the customer if the problem (the reason for the call) was operator's fault. Thus, in most cases, CS will still be free. Besides that you get 15€ back for every week your phone/net/... connection is broken - under the Finnish law. ;)
 
This is great news if TeliaSonera (or Sonera in Finland) will follow the current data transfer rates. Currently, their cheapest unlimited data packet costs about 15€/month. (Some other operators offer lower rates, about 10€.) There is a speed limit of 512 Kbps. With some extra money, you get higher speed limit.


Not really. True, they are one of the most expensive operators - but their service is good & reliable.

They had for a long time completely free 24/7 customer service. Nowadays, I think it's about 0.15€/min but still almost 24/7, except on Sundays. In Finland, the operator must refund all the CS costs to the customer if the problem (the reason for the call) was operator's fault. Thus, in most cases, CS will still be free. Besides that you get 15€ back for every week your phone/net/... connection is broken - under the Finnish law. ;)

All true except the speed is limited to 384kbps. For another 5€ a month you can get 1Mbps.

Joshua.
 
Telenor kicks Telias butt. For $33 you get HSDPA access with up to 7 mbps, thats nice. I dont even think Telia has got that, dont know though...
 
It looks like the iPhone will become the first phone ever in Finland that is only availeable through a carrier.

I'l pass on iPhone since I really really really don't wanna be tied to a carrier. Especially carrier so sucky as Sonera. I've been using mobile-phones since early 90's and during that time I've never had a simlocked phone or phone tied to any contract.
It's too bad if Sonera sucks. I always assumed they were one of the best since Telia teamed up with them. Telia is my current carrier and has been for many years. I used to have Europolitan, later acquired by Vodafone, and later again Telenor, and it worked fine where I lived in Stockholm. But then I went home to northern Sweden over Christmas, and as soon as the train left Stockholm the phone was dead and remained dead until I returned to Stockholm. So I switched to Telia and never looked back.
The problem is that Swedish law prohibits carriers to cooperate in any way, so they can't share infrastructure such as base stations and you can't 'borrow' bandwidth from one carrier in case you're out of reach for your carrier. So all the carriers have to build parallel infrastructure. And Sweden is a huge country geographically speaking, but with only 9 million people, and Telia is the only carrier with enough muscle to put up base stations in all the rural ass ends of Sweden. So I couldn't be happier, but it's unfortunate that it's a less attractive deal for the rest of Scandinavia...
 
Nokia is a network operator in Finland? You can get your phone bill from Nokia? Sounds bizarre.

It's not unheard of for a manufacturer to also be the network operator. Here in NZ my parents used to get their bill from Motorola. Of course, Europe may be (and probably is!) completely different :)
 
It's not unheard of for a manufacturer to also be the network operator. Here in NZ my parents used to get their bill from Motorola. Of course, Europe may be (and probably is!) completely different :)
Ah. Well, Europe has this inherent aversion to monopolies (see French lawsuits against Apple, Microsoft etc) and anyone who tries to grab a larger piece of the pie (or a piece of someone else's pie) gets a bunch of meddling politicians on their heels... but Nokia has this godlike status in Finland, for the Finns it's like Apple, Sun, Microsoft, Nike and McDonalds all rolled into one, so I'm sure they wouldn't object if they started their own TV channel, car brand or political party.
 
who cares what carrier got the deal. You`ll all be ordering american ones at less than half the price and jailbreaking them anyways. I know i will.

the att 3g uses 850/1900mhz frequency bands, teliasonera uses 2100mhz (and maybe 900 in finland). so you'll end up with a nice looking paper weight.
 
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