AUGUST 21, 2006 -- TeliaSonera Finland (Search for TeliaSonera) today launched new high-speed broadband services based on optical fiber, now available to housing companies and their residents in the Greater Helsinki area and in Tampere. The consumer customers will be offered what TeliaSonera says is the fastest broadband access in Finland, Sonera Laajakaista Extra (Sonera Broadband Extra), with a maximum speed of 100 Mbits/sec. The housing companies will be offered Sonera Kiinteistöyhteys Kuitu (Sonera Multi-Dwelling Fiber Access), with a speed of 1/1 Gbits/sec.
"TeliaSonera Finland focuses major efforts on building a next-generation network and developing services for it," reports Eero Sinkkonen, head of the information society structures and services division at TeliaSonera Finland. "An optic[al] fiber network is a secure and sustainable solution, an investment in the future. For consumers and housing companies, the optical fiber opens a door to new services. The next-generation television technology--HDTV--for example, sets entirely new requirements for broadband access," he contends. "In future, it will also be important to further develop the transactions between citizens and authorities. High-speed network connections are becoming a service comparable to the electric power network, and the optic[al] fiber network offers a sufficient amount of capacity both now and in the future."
Optical fiber access provides enough capacity even for a demanding user, for the access offered to housing companies is based on the Metro Ethernet backbone network, which has a data transmission capacity of 1-10 Gbits/sec. The fiber-based service designed for housing companies will first be offered to selected housing companies in the Greater Helsinki Area and in Tampere, Turku, and Oulu, say TeliaSonera representatives.
Broadband services implemented in the high-speed network will be available only for the residents of the housing companies connected to the fiber-optic network.
"The services will be targeted at 1-, 10- and 100-Mbit/sec user groups," explains Juha-Pekka Weckström, director of TeliaSonera Finland's products & services division. A 1-Mbit/sec connection is suited for users of basic Internet services and 10 Mbits/sec is enough even for a whole family's demanding media needs, whereas the 100-Mbit/sec access--the fastest in Finland--will be appreciated by heavy users and network game players," Weckström notes. "In light of the increasing delay demands of network games, for example, the 100-Mbit/sec service is of quite a different class than the current broadband connections."
To facilitate the adoption and management of the services, TeliaSonera Finland will introduce a new self-service channel for end users, on which the customers can order a connection and change their transmission rate classes and services, for example.
The new fiber-based broadband products now launched by TeliaSonera Finland are:
• Sonera Kiinteistöyhteys Kuitu (Sonera Multi-Dwelling Fibre Access for housing companies)
• Sonera Laajakaista Extra (Sonera Broadband Extra for consumer customers)
Supplementary services available:
• Tilausvideot SF-Anytime (video-on-demand)
• HS Musiikkilataamo (a mobile music service)
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