OREANDA-NEWS. January 11, 2008. “TeliaSonera aims to sustain its leadership in Azerbaijan’s telecommunication market,” Lars Nyberg, President & CEO of TeliaSonera, one of the biggest European telecom companies, announced at a press conference during his visit to Baku. The visit was in the framework of his tour of TeliaSonera companies in the Eurasia business area, including Azerbaijan, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Moldova and Uzbekistan.

“Azerbaijan was the first CIS country after Russia we started investing in 2003. Now, Azercell is number 1 mobile operator and to become a company for Azerbaijan to take pride in. We intend to stay so,” Nyberg said. “Our strategy that focuses on acceptance of and respect towards local traditions, on creating value for all our stakeholders and providing world class customer service, will help us to sustain our leadership and earn trust of even more customers.”

“We invest in Azerbaijan because we strongly believe in the bright economic future of this country. Azerbaijan is playing an increasingly important role for CIS and Europe and has a high potential for development of telecommunication services. In this respect we are one of the major European investors in the CIS,” Nyberg concluded.
About TeliaSonera AB.

TeliaSonera AB (OJSV) is the leading telecommunications company in the Nordic and Baltic region, with strong positions within mobile communications in Eurasia, including Turkey and Russia. TeliaSonera was formed in December 2002 when the Swedish leading telecom operator Telia merged with the Finnish leading telecom operator Sonera. The TeliaSonera share is listed on the Stockholm Stock Exchange and the Helsinki Stock Exchange. TeliaSonera has over 690,000 shareholders. The biggest shareholders are the governments of Sweden (37.3%) and Finland (13.7%). TeliaSonera and its associated companies offer communication services to over 100 mn subscribers in 18 countries and employ over 28,000 staff. In 2006, TeliaSonera net sales were SEK 91 bn, EBITDA was SEK 32.266 bn, net income was SEK 19.28 bn.

Azercell Telecom JV established on January 19, 1996, the company started operating on a post-paid system by December 15th of the same year. Today Azercell Telecom is a joint venture of the Ministry of Communication and Information technologies of the Azerbaijan Republic (35,7%) and Fintur Holdings BV (64,3%). Fintur Holdings BV entered a joint venture with the companies TeliaSonera (58%) and Turkcell (42%).