Tele2

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Tele2 AB
Type of Company	Public
Founded	1993
Headquarters	Stockholm, Sweden
Key people	Vigo Carlund (Chairman of the board), Lars-Johan Jarnheimer (President and CEO)
Industry	Telecommunications
Products	Mobile and fixed-line telephony, cable TV and internet services
Revenue	49,943 million SEK (2005)
Employees	3,909
Website	http://www.tele2.com/

Tele2 AB is one of Europe's biggest alternative telecommunications operators with over 30 million customers in 22 countries. It serves as a fixed-line telephone operator, cable television provider, mobile phone operator, internet service provider and a content provider.

Tele2 started as a telecommunications company in Sweden in the late 1970s by the company Industriförvaltnings AB Kinnevik. In 1981, a mobile phone provider called Comvik started as an alternative mobile phone operator to Telia. The cable television provider Kabelvision AB started in 1986. Comvik changed it name to become Comviq when the company got a GSM license in 1988 and started operating in 1992.

In 1991, Industriförvaltnings AB Kinnevik started Tele2 as Sweden's first ISP and in 1997 with telephone liberalisation in Sweden, Tele2 started to offer international calls.

Countries in which Tele2 operates in red, countries in which Tele2 no longer operates in green.

The three companies of Comviq, Kabelvision, and Tele2 came together as the Tele2 brand on fixed-line services and Comviq on mobile services in Sweden in 1997. International growth came in the form of acquisitions in Estonia, Latvia, Russia & France. Today it serves as a major telephone company in the Nordic and Baltic nations, together as an alternative provider in many others.

Tele2 operates in Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Croatia, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Russia, Germany, Austria, Poland, Czech Republic, Hungary, France, Italy, Spain, Switzerland, Portugal, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Liechtenstein & Belgium.

Its most recent developments has been the broadcast and Internet television company Tango TV (T.TV) in Luxembourg, and 2G and 3G mobile operations in Croatia, which are scheduled for autumn 2005 for 2G and spring 2006 for 3G.

In August 2005, Tele2 left the Finnish market, because they felt there was no growth in Finland. One of reasons was the local telephone companies such as Elisa, which has a monopolistic control over local calls.

On the 19th December 2005, Tele2 sold its British and Irish operations to the Carphone Warehouse Group for GBP 8.7 million, because it felt that it wasn't making progress in the market of those countries. This sale coincided with the sale of a large competitor, One.Tel (previously owned by British Gas parent company Centrica and not to be confused with the Australian One.Tel), also to the Carphone Warehouse Group.

[edit] See also

• List of Swedish television channels

[edit] External links

• Tele2's home page