16 years after world’s first commercial GSM network launch in 1991 the mighty Finns have once again claimed their position amongst leading information societies as Elisa, Finnish leading communications company, has debuted with the first commercial UMTS900 3G network.

In contrast to HSDPA, also firstly introduced by Elisa in Nordic region in 2006, UMTS900 uses WCDMA air interface technology and can therefore be profitably expanded to sparsely populated areas. It uses a frequency of 900 MHz and its development cost is only 1/3 of HDSPA.

UMTS900 3G mobile data speeds currently go as high as 2 Mbps. UMTS Revision 8 is also considered as Pre-4G with a download rates of 100 Mbps and upload rates of 50 Mbps.

At the beginning of 2008, approximately 75% of Finns in over 130 municipalities will be covered by Elisa’s 3G services and over the next year the speeds in newly implemented network will increase to 10 Mbps.

Elisa’s recent investments in mobile communications paid off in Estonia as Elisa’s mobile internet usage went up more than 10 times in 2007.