Finland and Estonia were the only countries with over 1,6 mobile subscriptions per capita. In the other countries the number varied between 1,1 and 1,5 subscriptions per capita in 2019. While there are differences between the countries, it can be said that the total number of mobile subscriptions generally is stagnating.
The number of mobile call minutes was growing in most countries while Finland was the only country with a decrease. The highest usage per capita was observed in Sweden.
Data traffic in mobile networks continued to increase in all of the countries. Finland had by far the largest data volumes, 36,3 Gbyte per capita and month, and traffic continued to grow fast. An important factor behind this development is the popularity of subscriptions without data caps in Finland. Volumes in the other countries ranged from 5,6 to 21,2 Gbyte per capita and month.
The number of machine-to-machine (M2M) SIM cards was growing in all of the countries. The 2018 and 2019 figure for Sweden is based on the estimated number of M2M SIM cards used inside the country. No corresponding estimates are available for previous years. More than half of all M2M SIM cards with Swedish numbers are used outside of the country. The main reason for this is that Telenor’s global M2M operations are headquartered in Sweden.
