Finnish operator Elisa says it has become the first operator in the world to begin commercial use of a 5G network and starts selling 5G subscriptions.

Not only that, the network was kicked off by an international video call – from Finland to Estonia. In Tampere, Anne Berner, Finnish Minister of Transport and Communications called Kadri Simson, Estonian Minister of Economic Affairs and Infrastructure, in Tallinn.

“We aim to make Finland the leading nation as a developer of 5G mobile services,” said Berner. “The Ministry of Communications is ready to allocate the first 5G licences to the 3,400–3,800 megahertz frequency band in autumn, which will make Finland among the first countries in the world to start building 5G networks.”

“Elisa actively enables Finland to continue leadership in mobile data usage by opening commercial 5G network first in the world,” said Elisa’s CEO Veli-Matti Mattila. “With the help of 5G services, consumers as well as corporate and institutional customers will get lots of new value when modern applications can be used more efficiently and it becomes possible to develop new applications. For example, it will be possible in the future for all viewers to watch the same football match as a high-quality live broadcast without delay using any terminal device.”

Elisa was keen to remind everyone it made the first GSM call too and it’s good to see Europe is still capable of leading the way in telecoms. The bigger picture still seems to be that Europe will lag the US and the Far East in 5G, but this sort of thing indicates that if the EU and regulators can get their act together we might be able to close the gap a bit.