Faster wireless service is skyrocketing, Nokia says

Nokia Oyj, the world's biggest cellular-phone maker, said growth in subscriber numbers for faster wireless services is more rapid than the increase in users in the early 1990s when digital mobile services were introduced.

Operators have added about 8 million customers this year for the so-called third-generation services, bringing the total number to more than 10 million, Sari Baldauf, head of the Espoo, Finland-based company's wireless network unit, said at a TeliaSonera AB press conference in Helsinki.

Operators as Vodafone Group Plc and handset makers such as Nokia are trying to boost demand for the new services to lift sales as markets near saturation. Still, only a fraction of the world's more than 1.5 billion wireless users are using the services, which let users surf the Internet and make video calls.

"The various players in the industry are really working hard for the services. There is a lot of cooperation around the world," Baldauf said.

TeliaSonera, which began its faster service in Finland yesterday, plans to add "several tens of thousands" of subscribers in the country next year, Anni Vepsaelaeinen, head of TeliaSonera's Finnish unit, said at the press conference. The company had 2.3 million wireless users in Finland at the end of June.

Fifty worldwide are currently offering third-generation services, Baldauf said. Nokia, which is competing against Ericsson AB in selling network gear, has supplied equipment to 24 of the operators, she said.

Nokia expected to post earnings at the high end of its estimates on Thursday after recently enjoying a surge in its market share.

"The outlook for Nokia is quite positive, and I believe that they will come in at the upper end of their guidance," Erkki Vesola, telecom analyst with investment bank Mandatum, told reporters.

Upbeat comments are good news for Nokia, whose abysmal results in the first half of the year sent technology stocks around the world skidding and prompted economists to worry that the mobile goliath played too dominant a role in the Finnish economy.