RIGA - Top Lattelekom managers last week unveiled plans to expand operations to Scandinavian markets in an effort to serve clients with international needs and extract more out of existing high-tech capacities.
In a video conference held simultaneously in all three Baltic capitals, company executives announced that they had begun offering services in Sweden and Finland allowing corporations with operations there to use Lattelekom's international data transmission services. This, in turn, will facilitate centralized management for companies working in any combination of the five countries.
In the words of CEO Nils Melngailis, "Statistics show that the Nordic countries are the major investors in the Baltics, and the solutions offered by Lattelekom will further economic development in the region."
As Melngailis explained, accession to the EU has increased investment interest in the Baltics, and Baltic companies are slowly expanding their operations abroad, creating the need for centralized telecommunication solutions.
Aigars Ceruss, sales and marketing director at Lattelekom, said that the time had come to help clients fulfill their international needs, primarily "reliable and easy to use voice and data solutions."
In fact, executives even suggested that the company's future success depended in a large part on foreign markets.
Ulo Laanoja, director of Lattelekom's Estonian branch, said, "Our further development depends on our clients' needs. Once they expand to new countries, we will go after them."
This expansion is the latest phase in the Baltic Network project that began in 2002. Based on ATM (asynchronous transfer mode) technology, the project aimed to create the optimal environment for clients' data transfer throughout the Baltics.
Lattelekom's ambitious expansion effort has so far cost 580,000 euros.
"The costs were relatively low since the company is renting most of the network from partners in Estonia, Lithuania and the Scandinavian states instead of setting them up from scratch," said Ceruss.
The company, which is 51 percent owned by the state and 49 percent owned by the Finnish-Swedish telecommunication company TeliaSonera, hopes to have some 50 Baltic network clients by the end of the year, compared with 28 in 2003.
However, Lattelekom officials said they "did not intend to compete with TeliaSonera in local markets."
"By Baltic Network expansion we have created the link between two regions, two business areas - the Baltic states and the Nordic countries. This project promotes cooperation between the two mentioned areas," said Ilze Supe, communications manager at Lattelekom.
"It is also a unique network among TeliaSonera's group. We do see opportunities to cooperate with other companies of TeliaSonera's group in order to effectively use our data transmission services platform," she said.
Revenue forecasts on the Baltic network provide for a 14 percent increase year-on-year to 1 million euros.
