OXFORD, United Kingdom—Sweden’s largest cell-phone operator Telia has decided to share a percentage of the revenues generated by content services with the developers. The new approach for the company is based on Telia offering the content developers a “direct channel” to its 3 million mobile customers.
The idea behind this change of heart by Telia is to promote the further development of Internet-based services, together with easy billing through mobile-phone invoices or prepaid cards. Telia said it would charge content providers for traffic rates and 20 percent of the price of the services being offered to customers as opposed to the current 50 percent that has brought many complaints from content providers for stifling the market. The payment model for premium short message service (SMS) customers will also be revised.
This came as the Swedish government announced it had become the first country to have more mobile-phone subscriptions than landline connections, suggesting that mobile-phone penetration in the country is approaching saturation. According to statistics produced by the government, the total number of cell-phone subscriptions has reached 6.4 million, a 24-percent year-on-year increase. The number of fixed lines operating in Sweden currently totals 5.8 million, but the study found the number of fixed-line subscriptions had actually decreased by 3 percent.
