Just nine years ago Telia was on top of the world. The Swedish company had launched 3G services on Mount Everest by installing a base station at an altitude of 5,200m, laying claim to be the world’s highest telecoms network.
As it turned out, that moment — part engineering feat and part corporate bravado — proved to be the apex of a two-decade race by the European telecoms industry to plant a flag in every corner of the planet. The land-grab was fierce, with incumbent operators battling a new breed of aggressive mobile-only players led by Vodafone that were willing to spend record sums to push into new markets.
Yet the industry’s dream has long soured, unable to build truly global brands like the leading tech groups and media providers that piggybacked on the industry’s infrastructure. The sector’s biggest names, which had built subscriber bases equivalent to the populations of large countries — by 2014, Vodafone had 434m customers — have started to retreat from their far-flung empires. Seen initially as engines for growth, much of the telecoms colonialism yielded little return on investment and, for the likes of Telia, hefty fines related to corruption.