Elisa says mobile recovery continues at moderate pace as 5G and AI-RAN advance

Elisa recently ran what it claims to be Europe’s first voice, mobile data, and video analytics simultaneously on the same AI-RAN platform over Elisa’s 5G Advanced network

In sum – what to know

Mobile recovery moderates — Elisa said mobile recovery continued at a more moderate pace, with mobile service revenue down 2.3% year on year while 5G upselling continued.

5G and fiber grow — 5G penetration reached 61%, up three percentage points, while fixed broadband subscriptions increased by more than 20,000.

AI-RAN advances — Elisa is moving from a proof of concept toward implementation with Nokia and Nvidia, while data-center connectivity order intake reached about EUR 100 million year to date.

Finnish carrier Elisa chief executive officer Topi Manner said the company’s mobile recovery continued at a more moderate pace in Q3, although mobile service revenue declined 2.3% year on year. Telecom service revenue decreased 1.3%, while fixed service revenue grew 1.6%.

Group revenue was flat at EUR 561 million ($627.7 million), while comparable Ebitda declined 1.8% to EUR 210 million. Manner told a conference call with investors that mobile service revenue edged up slightly quarter on quarter, while the business remained affected by last year’s competition and mobile subscriptions fixed for 12 months at low price points. The upsell of 5G continued to support mobile service revenue, he said.

5G penetration reached 61%, up three percentage points during the quarter. Mobile postpaid subscriptions declined by about 16,000, while the M2M and IoT base grew by about 10,000. Postpaid churn increased to 18.7%, which Manner said was the long-term average for third-quarter churn over the past 10 years.

Manner said new mobile sales prices were higher than in Q3 2025 and higher than during all four quarters of 2025. CFO Kristian Pullola said the impact of improved sales prices would be more visible in 2027.

Fiber and data-center connectivity

Elisa’s fixed broadband subscription base increased by more than 20,000 across FTTH and FTTB. Manner said data-center connectivity represented a new growth opportunity alongside existing fiber demand.

Elisa’s year-to-date cumulative order intake in data-center connectivity reached approximately EUR 100 million, with orders mainly secured during Q3.

Manner highlighted Google’s announcement of EUR 1.3 billion of data-center investment in Finland over two years and said Elisa had been selected as Google’s main connectivity partner for all four of its Finnish data-center campuses.

Revenue from data-center connectivity is expected to begin mainly from 2028, once connections are completed. Elisa expects positive full-year net cash flow from the business because of customer advance payments. The company is also examining opportunities in optics and managed services, the executive said.

AI-RAN moves toward implementation

Manner said Elisa was moving from a proof of concept announced in March toward implementation of AI-RAN with Nokia and Nvidia.

The company also announced last week that it had completed Europe’s first live-network demonstration in which voice, mobile data, and video analytics ran simultaneously on the same AI-RAN platform over its 5G Advanced network.

Elisa said the demonstration supports a path toward commercial AI-RAN services in 2027. The trial used Nokia’s AI-RAN solution and Nvidia Aerial RAN Computer with Nvidia RTX PRO 4500 Blackwell Server Edition GPUs.

Elisa is also deploying Dell PowerEdge servers featuring Nvidia RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell Server Edition GPUs at multiple network locations in Finland to create distributed AI computing capacity for current AI inference workloads and future AI-RAN deployments.

“We are developing further solutions together with Nokia and Nvidia, and we expect to see very soon announcements related to even closer collaboration around AI-RAN,” Manner said.