Finda’s over 130-year history stretches back to the introduction of the telephone in Finland in the 1870s. Finland’s first telephone companies were founded in 1882 in Turku and Helsinki, and soon after that in all major cities. At the peak, there were nearly 900 telephone companies. Among the telephone companies at these beginning stages were also Finda’s founding companies, Satakunnan Teletieto Oy and Lännen Puhelin Oy’s holding companies.
The emergence of modern phone companies
The predecessor of Satakunnan Teletieto, Telefooniyhdistys, was founded in Pori in 1883, and its operations developed into the telephone company of the city of Pori in 1927. The calls of Pori’s residents were relayed by the city until 1992, when the city sold its holdings to the newly founded Porin Puhelin Oy. Lännen Puhelin, in turn, was born when Naantalin Telefooniyhtiö was authorized to operate in 1884. The company was expanded purposefully with mergers of smaller telephone companies, which were used to form Varsinais-Suomen Puhelinosuuskunta in 1983.
Finland’s telecommunications throughout the 1990s were colored by economic liberalization in both fixed network services, as well as the mobile phone business. The development of the telecommunications sector led toward larger units and company restructuring. The result of this development was the founding of the provincial Satakunnan Puhelin Oy in 1997, which Porin Puhelin was merged with in 2000. A couple of years later, Huittisten Puhelin Oy and Kankaanpään Puhelin Oy were merged with it, as well. Correspondingly, in 1994 Lännen Puhelin was born by the merging of Rauman Seudun Puhelin Oy and Tele-Teljä to Varsinais-Suomen Puhelinosuuskunta. These organizations enabled the launch of DNA in the early 2000s as the mobile phone business of the telephone companies.
The change from operator to active owner and investor
The result of this concentration was that provincial telephone companies transformed even more from operative telephone companies to active owners. In the summer of 2007, Satakunnan Puhelin and Lännen Puhelin, along with other local telephone companies, moved their telecommunications and data network operations to DNA Oy. At the same time, Satakunnan Puhelin changed its name to Satakunnan Teletieto. At that time, the combined number of employees between Lännen Puhelin ja Satakunnan Puhelin was roughly 500 and turnover approximately 82 million euros (2006). The current Finda was born on 1 September 2008 when Lännen Puhelin Oy merged with Satakunnan Teletieto Oy, and the company changed its name to Lännen Teletieto Oy. In 2010, the name was changed from Lännen Teletieto Oy to Finda Oy
As we arrived in the 2010s, the over century-long history of local telephone companies reached its apex. The jointly owned DNA had developed into a profitable operator that had over 3.7 million mobile and fixed network customers, as well as an approximate 28% market share in mobile phone subscriptions. DNA was listed on the Helsinki stock exchange in December 2016. At the same time, the growth in DNA’s shareholder value offered a strong foundation for the future growth of the Finda investment group.
In August 2019 Finda sold its DNA-shares to Telenor.
Read more: Findan_historia.pdf
