Elisa Finland

Company Overview

Elisa Finland is the second largest mobile carrier operating in Finland. The telecommunications company was founded in 1882 as HPY HTF, becoming Radiolinja in September 1988 with the launch of its first mobile services. Throughout the 1990s Radiolinja merged with FinnetCom, Tampereen Puhelin, Keski-Suomen Puhelin, and Joensuun Puhelin, to emerge in July 2000 as Elisa. Elisa Oyj operates networks in both Estonia and Finland.

The company has provided 2G GSM services over 900 and 1800 MHz bands since December 1991, with the world's first GSM call being made over its network. Elisa launched 3G UMTS over B1 (2100 MHz) in April 2006, and a B8 (900 MHz) network in November 2007. 3G services were upgraded to DC-HSPA+ in August 2011.

Elisa commercially launched its 4G LTE service in February 2013 over B7 (2600 MHz) in December 2010, adding a B3 (1800 MHz) carrier in November 2011. B1 (2100 MHz) and B20 (800 MHz) LTE was introduced in January 2014, and B28 (700 MHz) in February 2017.

Elisa commercially launched 300 Mbps LTE-A using CA_3A-7A carrier aggregation to combine 20 MHz of B3 and 20 MHz of B7 spectrum in March 2015. In August 2016 Elisa announced its LTE-A Pro network testing yielded 1.9 Gbps utilising 100 MHz of spectrum across its five LTE bands (5C aggregation) in combination with 4X4 MIMO and 256QAM. The company announced the launch of its gigabit LTE-A Pro network in October 2017.

NB-IoT testing began in October 2017, with a national launch taking place in April 2018. Due to 800 MHz spectrum embargo in place near the Russian border, Elisa use B3 (1800 MHz) in Eastern Finland, and elsewhere both B3 and B20 (800 MHz).

Elisa 5G

The company began testing 5G NR in April 2017 over the 3.5 GHz band, and became one of the first in the world to begin commercial use of 5G NR when in June 2018 it began offering a 5G n78 (3500 MHz) NR network with a 100 MHz channel size, providing data rates in excess of 1.8 Gbps.